SECOND COPY, 
1899. 




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LIFE AND REMAINS 



OF THE 



Rev. R. H. QUICK 




' T ^X A 



1*11' 






ftU 




LIFE AND REMAINS 



OF THE 



Rev. R/H, QUICK 



EDITED BY 

f/storr 



THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

LONDON : MACMILLAN & CO., Ltd. 
1 899 

All rights reserved 



£>B £,75" 

-Qss-r 



32472 

Copyright, 1899, 
By TH^ MACMILLAN COMPANY. 

TWO COPIES H£criV£0. 




1899 

of Cool 




J. S. Cushing & Co. — Berwick & Smith 
Norwood Mass. U. S. A. 






PREFACE 



Some apology is needed for the late appearance of these 
Memoirs. I have almost reached the period of incubation 
prescribed by Horace for a poem, and I cannot, as Dr Parkin 
does in his Life of Edward Thring, "wrap myself in my 
virtue " and plead imperative and Imperial duties as a justifi- 
cation for the delay. The only excuse I can offer is that the 
routine labours of a schoolmaster and journalist (in a humble 
way) have left me scant leisure, so that the work has had to 
be done mainly in my summer holidays. 

Nor was the task of selection and arrangement a light or 
easy one. The materials from which I have drawn consist 
of forty Notebooks of various dimensions, a life-record ex- 
tending over more than a quarter of a century. These, if 
printed in extenso, would make, on a rough estimate, ten or 
eleven volumes of the same size as this one. The com- 
pression has been effected by rigorously excluding everything 
that was not either of professional interest to the teacher or 
illustrative of the writer's mind and character. Thus I have 
sacrificed much bearing on politics, on general literature, on 
bibliography, and even in the matter of pedagogics I have 
chosen to err rather by defect than excess. 1 The Notebooks 
are at once a Diary and an Adversaria, a votive tablet that 
displays the whole life of the man, and to me as I read there 
was hardly a dull page in the forty volumes ; but I am warned 
by recent biographies that the general reader would rather 
have too little than too much. 

To the position that Quick held and still holds both as a 
striking personality and as an educational expert, two testi- 

1 Thus, in the Index to the Notebooks prepared by Quick, I find 
under " Teacher " sixty-three distinct references and fifty-eight under 
" Latin." 



N> 



vi Preface 

monies have reached me while these Memoirs were passing 
through the press. The first is a letter of Thring, printed 
in Dr Parkin's Life, in answer to a letter gratefully acknow- 
ledging the dedication to Quick of the Theory and Practice 
of Teaching. 

" I am very glad that the dedication has pleased you. You 
richly deserve any pleasure it may give you, for two good 
reasons. You are the only man I have met with who has not 
been a mere partisan in education, who has not looked at it 
through professional spectacles of more or less self-interest, 
and been a modernist, because that was his line, or a classicist, 
because that was his line ; but has quietly looked and thought 
about what is best." 

The second is the proposal for a "Quick Memorial Fund," 
to which many leaders of the profession, both in England and 
America, have already subscribed. On her husband's death 
Mrs Quick presented to the Teachers' Guild some thousand 
volumes on educational subjects, and also placed on loan in 
its library his valuable collection of old books and tracts on 
pedagogy. With the interest of the fund thus raised it is 
proposed to make yearly additions to this nucleus and so 
establish a Quick Memorial Library as a recognition of " the 
splendid services which he so persistently and so modestly 
rendered to education." 

It only remains for me to thank first and foremost Mrs 
Quick for the trust she has reposed in me, her valuable help 
in revising the proofs, and her forbearance with my dilatori- 
ness ; the Syndics of the University Press for reading the 
Memorials in MS. and suggesting not a few judicious omis- 
sions ; and last, but not least, my wife for aiding me in the 
selection and for making the full Index. 

F. S. 
Athen^um Club, 

ii March, 1899. 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

Life i 

Elementary Education 127 

Public Schools 158 

Boys and Masters . . .210 

Examination 216 

School Wrinkles 228 

What to teach 247 

Child Nature . . 297 

Dora and Oliver 303 

Training of Teachers ......... 349 

Language 388 

Memory 39$ 

Adversaria Moralia 406 

Varia • 445 

Varia Literaria 449 

Preaching and Lecturing 472 

Religious Beliefs 498 

Varia . ." • • 5°5 

Criticisms of Books . 524 

Portrait To face Title 

vii 



MEMOIRS OF R. H. QUICK 



Robert Hebert Quick, the eldest son of James Carthew 
Quick, was born in London on Sept. 20, 1831. Though neither 
of his parents was known beyond a narrow circle of friends 
and relations, they were both remarkable for independence of 
character and originality. His father was a City merchant, 
much respected for his sound judgment and strict probity, who 
realised in business a considerable fortune. Though frugal in 
his personal expenditure he was generous in his charities and 
most liberal to his children. The knowledge that he had not 
wholly to depend on his own exertions for a livelihood en- 
couraged in the son that roving disposition, that constitutional 
craving for a change of scene and occupations, which appeared 
to his friends a strange idiosyncrasy in one so constant in his 
affections and apparently demanding so little from life. His 
father, we are told by competent judges, had a natural gift for 
literary composition, though the press of business left him 
little leisure for its cultivation. An old friend of the family, 
Miss Bayford Harrison, writes, " I have read hymns and short 
poems of his well worthy a place in literature, and no man 
could write a more terse and vigorous letter. His mother, 
too, was a remarkable woman, a lover of children, and in the 
infant school at Ingatestone, which she maintained and super- 
intended, an unconscious Froebelian. From his father Hebert 
inherited the literary faculty which was turned into the literary 
channel prepared, as it were, by his mother." 



2 R. H. Quick 

Hebert was nearly forty years old when he began to put 
on paper any recollections of his childhood, but the vision is 
still clear and distinct. We see a highly imaginative child, 
living in a dreamland of his own, caring little for games, 
making no friendships with his schoolfellows, whom he hardly 
saw out of school, and absorbed in the dreamland of fancy 
and the fairy world of story-books. He moralises on " the 
permanence of these early impressions which should surely 
make one very careful as to their nature." "The other day," 
he notes (May 1870), "I came on the old Oxford Drawing 
Book which I had not seen since I was a small boy. Some of 
the pictures were much more familiar to me when I opened the 
book than those of the last Illustrated which I had seen the 
day before. The effect of the Italian engravings of the old 
Goethe remained with Wolfgang all his life." Once and again 
in his diaries he laments the loss of this childish power of make- 
believe, and complains with Wordsworth that he ' cannot see the 
sights that once he saw.' 

" I remember the time when anything that broke the spell 
of the enchantment [in a novel] was an annoyance. I resented 
Sir W. Scott's speaking in the Antiquary of Shavings the car- 
penter, because the name reminded me that the whole thing 
was a fiction." 

To childish impressions too he traces the germs of his 
marked love of architecture which were developed by foreign 
travel and visits to the great cathedrals of France, Germany 
and the Netherlands. 

" Yesterday I attended a meeting of the Tercentenary General 
Committee at the Westminster Hotel, and getting to Westminster 
early I strolled into the Abbey. In an instant I was carried 
back some five-and-twenty years and the building was the one 
I used to visit, or I should say rather I was again the boy who 
five-and-twenty years ago visited it. These sudden revelations 
of the past seem to be something distinct from ordinary memory. 
I had at the moment forgotten all about the visits to the Abbey 



Childhood 3 

when I used to walk to it from Denmark Hill. This strange 
feeling brought back the remembrance ; but it was quite distinct 
from the remembrance and might, I think, have come over me 
if I had forgotten those visits. I have been in the Abbey 
occasionally in the interval, though not now for a long time, but 
this feeling of the old time, of my old admiration for the South 
transept window, of the peculiar earthy smell of the Abbey or 
of its vault-like air, I don't know which, had never before come 

over me. 

i And then it vanished as it came.' 

" After a few seconds the Abbey became the building of to- 
day, and all these feelings are memories merely, just like my 
remembrance of visits to the Abbey. The other was a vision, 
not a memory. One cannot talk much about feelings of this 
kind, for they seem to be beyond language. ' Transcendental ' 
according to the dictionaries is that which goes beyond ex- 
perience, not beyond knowledge. What I am speaking of goes 
beyond speech, not beyond experience." 

Though overclouded by a serious illness which impaired a 
naturally robust constitution and left him all his life a delicate 
though muscularly strong man, his childhood was a happy time 
to which as a schoolboy he looked back regretfully. From his 
own experience he judged that nothing can take the place of a 
home education, at least when the surroundings are favourable, 
and that a boarding school is at best a pis-alter. " Es bildet ein 
Talent sich in der Stille," and the full " stream of the world," 
he held, should not come before college days. Two things 
only he regretted in looking back to his early instruction. " I 
did riot learn to love or even to say good poetry such as Dora 
[his eldest child] is now learning and learning to love, and I 
never had my attention drawn to such things as wild flowers 
and birds" (Oct. '87). 

" My own remembrances extend back a long way. My child- 
hood was divided into two parts by a long illness which began 
when I was five years old. Before this I was very fond of 



4 R. H. Quick 

« 

being read to, and I had a very strong verbal memory which 
showed itself in learning songs &c. I remember now ['69] 
some of the words of Paul Pry which I used to sing in those 
days, my mother playing the tune. There were a great many 
verses but I knew them all. Of course I did not understand 
them all and when I did not I made mistakes. One of these I 
remember : — 

' They've got me in the picture shops, 
They have upon my honour ; 
I'm next to Venus, which they say 
Is quite a libel on her.' 

I took it to be ' quite a label honour.' " 

* * * * 

" I remember two moments of supreme delight in these early 
years. One was when our house was flooded. The other was on 
one of my birthdays when on going in to dessert I found a toy 
bridge constructed on the dining-room table, on which bridge 
there were actually tin vehicles. There was an eclipse of the 
sun and I remember people using burnt glasses to look at it. 
I have an impression that it happened on a Sunday. At the 
time of the eclipse I was going every day to Miss Gutty's school, 
or I had perhaps become a weekly boarder. I remember on 
one occasion seeing my face (I can still recall the impression) 
on the brass handle of her front door. I must have seen it 
every day in the looking-glass. Why should only this sensation 
have left a permanent impress? At Miss Gutty's I cried 
considerably at first, and the feeling of grief must have been 
strong to be remembered now. Of the lessons there I remember 
nothing. Some of the boys told me I was very wicked ; I did 
not bow when I pronounced our Lord's name in the Creed. 
Ignorance, however, not Protestantism, was the cause. 

" At this time I was very fond of music and the evening 
hymn which we sung every evening made a great impression on 
me. We sang the perverted Tallis, and such is the force of 



Childhood 5 

association that the tune which pleased me then pleases me now 
far better than the more correct version. It is absurd to suppose 
that children never think of the sense of what they say. I was 
very much impressed by Ken's words and used to wonder what 
' ills ' were. I shall never forget the effect of this hymn (words 
and tune) upon me. I certainly used it with a sort of religious 
aspiration. 

" At this school we used to have as punishments the stocks 
and the backboard. The first was a machine for making you 
stand with your toes turned out (why should that be considered 
a grace ?) . The other was a board with handles round which 
you had to put your arms. 

" When I was just five I had measles, I was wrapped up in a 
blanket and carried home. Here I was ill in bed for a long 
time. Pickwick was coming out in those days and I remember 
the talk about it, especially the fat boy and the young lady 
with fur round her boots. After my illness my memory was not 
so good. Of all that was read to me before my illness I have 
few distinct ideas, ^sop interested me very much, and it must 
have been before my illness that I heard a most delightful book 
read about a great king with a great army trying to conquer a 
small country and being beaten. Many years afterwards I 
recognised this old delightful story in the history of the Persian 
Invasion. I had not learnt a single proper name when I first 
heard the story, but it had charmed me more than any other 
book read to me. Here is a proof that children do not care 
to hear about children, or at least of the converse of the pro- 
position. But how at that age could I have got any notion of 
an army and of an invasion and fighting? This is rather 
perplexing. I stayed in St James's Barracks with Sergeant Cole 
when I was very young, perhaps before I heard this story. 
From my interest in this story and also from the delight with 
which I read about the young Spartans in Pinnock's Goldsmith 
some years later, when I was about ten, I have always had a 
notion that history properly taught would interest children 



6 R. H. Quick 

exceedingly and would give the most healthy exercise to their 
imaginations. Why should severe discipline have an attraction 
for the young? The hard life of the young Spartans quite filled 
me with enthusiasm and I remember petty pieces of self- 
discipline I attempted in imitation of them. One desire which 
children have, the desire of being useful, was ingeniously turned 
to account to keep me amused during my illness. I was 
persuaded that I was doing a very useful thing in separating 
peas and other berries from coffee that was brought me and I 
worked away like a Trojan. 

" I was put to Miss Burrows before I was eight and I must 
have been able to read well, as when I had just turned eight I 
began Latin Grammar. Previously I had been taught something 
about the parts of speech in English. I was immensely delighted 
at beginning Latin and I kept up, as far as I can remember, a 
sort of liking for it. But my favourite book at Miss Burrows' 
was the Guide to Knowledge, which threw light on a vast variety 
of things in daily life. I'm sorry to say all the light has faded 
again, except that I remember the diseases to which wheat is 
subject — blight, mildew and smut — and also that Queen 
Elizabeth danced a pair of silk stockings, then a rarity, into 
holes. A good deal has been said against the futility of this 
miscellaneous knowledge, but I found the information I got 
out of the Guide gave me an interest in all sorts of things — 
vermicelli, macaroni, silk stockings, smut &c. — which interest 
died out as this branch of study was not pursued in other 
schools. 

" I forgot to mention that when I was four, or less, I went to 
stay in the City, in Cannon Street, and remember hearing the 
old watchman crying out the hours at night. During this visit 
Jane Thomas [an old friend of the family] was delighted at 
getting me to count up to 20. I should have said, too, some- 
thing of my remembrance of Church services. I stood up on 
the seat for the hymn, which was good fun, but the sermon 
was a fearful thing to which one had to resign oneself, in the 



School and College 7 

hope, rather than the belief, that it would sometime, in the 
remote future, come to an end." 

Of the decade between leaving the preparatory school and 
taking his degree at Cambridge there is hardly a trace in the 
Note Books, and my attempts to fill the gap by recollections 
supplied by relations and surviving contemporaries have been 
singularly barren. I can give little more than a few leading 
dates extracted from School and University calendars. 

He attended for a short time a private school at Weybridge, 
conducted by the late Dr Spyers (now by the Rev. G. E. Cotterill) . 
Thence he proceeded to Harrow in October 1846, but was 
removed by his parents at the end of the term on account of 
his health. Among the entries of that term we find the names 
of Charles Stuart Blayds, the C. S. Calverley of Fly Leaves, 
whose wayward genius and frolic humour were keenly relished 
by Quick, and Henry Montagu Butler, his future chief and life- 
long friend. Of the private tutors through whose hands he 
passed between 1850 and 1854, when he entered Trinity 
College, Cambridge, nothing survives but the names, and of 
his undergraduate days we have only faint glimpses and a few 
passing allusions in the Note Books. The College intimates 
whose names I can remember his mentioning to me in con- 
versation have all died or disappeared from ken, and in those 
days he was not a man of many friends. His was a clear case 
of arrested development. After a precocious childhood he 
seems for years to have lain dormant, slowly recuperating the 
powers that had been atrophied by a grave illness. At Cam- 
bridge he ground away with a stupid stubborn conscientiousness 
at mathematics, a subject for which he had little aptitude and 
less taste. Such, if I can trust my memory, are the very words 
in which he described to me his undergraduate studies. " Years 
ago at Cambridge," so he writes in his diary of 18 71, when he 
was a Harrow master, " I adopted as a rule Bacon's maxim, 
that you should attend to studies you don't like, and what you 
do like will take care of itself. This, at least in my case, was a 



8 R. H. Quick 

great mistake. I spent all my strength on things I had no 
taste for, and the examination was upon me before I had found 
time for the subjects in which I might have been successful. 
I still live under the shade of some dreary piece of work which 
takes all the heart out of me." For languages he had a 
decided turn and liking, and though he never paid much 
attention to verbal scholarship or philology in the narrower 
sense of the word, he had a keen appreciation of literary style, 
relished Le Misanthrope and Faust as keenly as he did Milton 
and Shakespeare, and wrote German with perfect ease and 
correctness. His natural line would have been classics, but he 
must have felt that having left the regular groove of a public 
school education and never attempted anything in composition 
beyond Ellis's prose and nonsense verses he was no longer in 
the running for the Classical Tripos. Had he been born an 
age later he would almost certainly have chosen the Historical 
or the Moral Sciences Tripos, but in his day there were no such 
alternatives. As it was, he passed out as Senior Optime in the 
Mathematical Tripos of 1854. He was not a man either at 
the time to be soured by his ill success, or, in after years, when 
he had made his mark, to lay the blame on the narrow cur- 
riculum which had afforded no scope for his powers, or on 
his tutors who had failed to discover the bent of his genius. 
The most modest of men, he ascribed his failure wholly to his 
own dulness and want of initiative. He was always proud of 
his alma mater and especially proud of belonging to the 
greatest College in the world, and it is to the credit both of 
Cambridge and of Trinity College, that they showed their 
appreciation of a loyal son, though he was an 6\f/tfxa0y]<5. After 
leaving Cambridge he went, as an additional unpaid curate, to 
the Rev. J. Llewelyn Davies at St Mark's, Whitechapel. Of 
the reasons that induced him to take Holy Orders the Note 
Books tell us nothing, but from his subsequent reflections on 
the work of a minister and his own qualifications and dis- 
qualifications for it, we may safely infer that, without feeling 



Ordination 9 

any special call, such as with men like Newman, Keble and 
Pusey, makes the ministry for them the one and only worthy 
pursuit in life, he chose the clerical profession as a field for 
useful labour. Ambition was certainly not a motive. " I 
never knew," says Mr Llewelyn Davies, "a man more un- 
worldly, more simple, more quietly indifferent to money or 
praise." And what to most men of ability, without the higher 
call, would have acted as a deterrent — the routine and drudgery 
of parochial administration and all the petty business that falls 
to a parson's lot in a poor parish, where he is the only man 
who has both the capacity and the leisure to undertake it — 
was to Quick rather an attraction. He gave up his curacy, 
not because he found the work irksome, but because it did not 
afford sufficient scope for his energies. His first Vicar and 
lifelong friend, Mr Davies, sums up briefly his estimate of 
Quick's clerical work. " He had not a telling manner as a 
preacher, but his sermons were always fresh and interesting 
and serious, and he could preach extempore with more success 
than I should have expected. And he had the advantage — no 
small one for a clergyman in these days — of being musical. 
In parochial work his sympathies were always with the poor, 
but they were guarded by a manly respect for the independence 
of the poorest, and a desire for their moral and intellectual 
elevation. I was sorry when he gave up his parish [Sedbergh] — 
though he did not altogether give up the performance of clerical 
duty — because I was convinced that his spiritual work, pure, 
loving and deeply reverent, had a peculiar excellence and value, 
such as he himself was not likely adequately to appreciate." 

A story communicated by Mr William Welch, his friend 
and colleague at Cranleigh, belongs properly to a later year, 
but it may be appositely told here as illustrating the kind- 
heartedness (with a dash of Irish recklessness) which endeared 
him to his East-end parishioners. 

" As a young man he used to put up at Whittaker's Hotel in 
Soho, and at the time when he was passing the first edition of 



io R. H. Quick 

Educational Reformers through the press, there was a fire in the 
building in the middle of the night. Quick conducted his old 
landlady to the house of a friend of his in the neighbourhood, 
whom he roused from his slumbers, and demanded admission. 
His friend was not over well pleased at being disturbed, and 
when Quick insisted that the housekeeper should be got up to 
make some tea for Mrs Whittaker, warmly protested. ' Non- 
sense,' said Quick, ' of course I shall tip her ; but by the bye 
I hav'n't my purse with me. Lend me half-a-crown.' He was 
referred to a pair of trousers hanging over a chair, abstracted 
the required coin, and tipped the servant with her master's 
money, which he never remembered to repay. 

"When I told Quick the anecdote, many years after, he 
chuckled with delight, and said, ' Well, if it's true that I forgot 
to repay him, I certainly won't do so now. It's too good a 
story to spoil.' " 

He turned to teaching, not, in the first instance at any rate, 
as impelled by any conscious bent or bias, but rather as an 
obvious alternative, the second string, so to speak, that every 
English cleric has to his bow. His own bringing up at private 
schools and at Harrow had left him profoundly dissatisfied with 
existing methods, and though at that period he had not thought 
out for himself any better way, he knew, or thought he knew, 
" how not to do it," and felt assured that even if he failed he 
could not well do worse than his own masters had done for him. 

From this point onward the Note Books are so full that, we 
may leave Quick to be his own biographer. A preliminary 
table of dates will help to make the succeeding stages clear. 

Lancaster Grammar School, June 1858 — Jan. 1859. 

Guildford Grammar School, Midsummer 1859 — Midsum- 
mer i860. 

Hurstpierpoint, Jan. — Aug. 1865. 

Cranleigh, 1865 — 1867. 

Hurstpierpoint, Oct. — Dec. 1867. 

Educational Reformers published, 1868. 



First Mastership 1 1 



* Autobiography 

"I was ordained Deacon on Trinity Sunday '55 and stayed 
at St Mark's till the autumn of '56. I think it was about Aug. 
'56 that, stirred up chiefly by Carlyle, I went for a month's 
holiday to Hamburg and boarded with the Albertinis. This gave 
me a start in the language, though I did not pick up enough 
to read German without constant dictionary work, so I suppose 
I was not much the wiser for my Hamburg trip when I went to 
Leipzig. On my return from Hamburg I went to Christ Church, 
Marylebone. I do not know what I did with myself there, but 
fancy it was not much. Healy and I spent a great deal of time 
together and no doubt his influence went far to discourage any 
attempts at an eigene Religion, if any of the old Manning im- 
pressions remained. I seemed to myself doing no good there 
and getting very idle. On the whole I thought I should do 
better at school work, so in Jan. '58 I left Davies and started 
for Germany to do something with the language before I set to 
work in the new line. In May I returned to England and 
arranged to take a mastership in Lancaster Grammar School. 
Here I had six months of tremendously hard work, teaching 
classics and mathematics all the week and doing duty with 
sermons at Halton on Sundays. For some little time I was 
nearly knocked up, but I came round and thoroughly enjoyed 
the amount of exertion the work required. Lee and I split 
about Sunday work at Xmas, and in Jan. '591 went again to 
Leipzig. On my return in May I tried to get a Grammar 
School to myself, but partly from my dislike to fixing myself 
down anywhere and partly from my dread of having to do 
with work-people, servants &c, was not very energetic in the 
pursuit. Finally, rather than remain another six months idle, 
I accepted the mathematical mastership at Guildford Gram- 
mar School, which I filled from the summer of '59 to the 



12 R. H. Quick 

summer of '60. Here my work was easy but intensely monoto- 
nous and very much against the grain, as I am not somehow 
good for very much at Mathematics. I suffered greatly from 
headache while at Guildford and was not sorry to leave. In 
August I went for a trip to the Tyrol, Vienna, Venetia &c, 
and having returned in October am now [Nov. '60] thinking 
of looking out for a curacy. 

" What then has been the outcome of my school experiences ? 
One thing at least has made itself clear, that such a life as a 
schoolmaster's settles down almost irresistibly into a life of the 
merest routine. This I found to be the case whether I had 
much to do or little. After a day's work there is little energy 
or inclination for anything but the merest amusements. More- 
over the employment of school teaching keeps the mind 
constantly engaged with small matters, small points of dis- 
cipline, small corrections of small faults. Then, again, most 
boys are thoughtless and stupid and exercise scarcely any of 
one's faculties except patience. It is very difficult too to treat 
them with courtesy ; they seem tiresome, unreasonable and 
weak, so one imperceptibly gets into the habit of speaking 
curtly, indeed rudely, to them. The master loses the whole- 
some sense of his own deficiency by constant intercourse with 
his inferiors, and this danger is the greater, as all boys are 
inclined to sycophancy. I have often been puzzled whether 
their rude flattery proceeded from sheer simplicity or from an 
early perception that flattery is pretty sure to please. Yet my 
intercourse with boys has on the whole raised them in my 
estimation and increased my liking for them. They are by no 
means the bad fellows Goethe tries to make them out. There 
is indeed a nasty spirit at times which takes possession of 
them and prompts them to tease one another and lie to their 
masters. If from some cause or other they take a dislike either 
to a boy or master, the teasing spirit, wonderfully strengthened 
in each by the consciousness that he has numbers with him, 
sometimes becomes actually fiendish. But so long as this 



Religious Teaching 1 3 

spirit lies dormant they are good-natured, hearty fellows, some- 
what idle, but easily encouraged to exertion. I know more 
however about the spirit, of teasing from recollection of my own 
schoolboy days than from anything I saw of it when I was a 
master. Lying indeed did come under my notice, but so also 
did many instances of truthfulness when truth was inconvenient 
or dangerous. 

" I went into school-work with the notion that great alterations 
might profitably be made in the subjects usually taught and in 
the way of teaching them. I am now fully convinced of this. 
What for instance is the present state of religious education? 
It is strange that while people are very keen as to the religious 
education of the poor, so that nothing can be done because of 
differences about the 'religious element,' this religious element 
is hardly thought of in the education of the rich, and nobody 
knows or cares or even thinks about it when a son is sent to 
Eton, Harrow or Winchester. The religious element certainly 
entered into the education of the Fourth Form when I was at 
Harrow, but how? In the shape of one lesson a week from 
Watts's Scripture History. And maybe the fathers of some of 
us were then offering the strongest opposition to all schemes of 
secular education and believing most firmly that such schemes 
end in infidelity and all sorts of immorality. Was the weekly 
lesson in Watts the salt that kept all the rest of our intellectual 
food wholesome for us? In all the other public schools I have 
known the religious teaching has been nearly as scant as at 
Harrow in the forties. Even in the National Schools where 
there is so much fuss about it, all the talk ends in the children 
having to learn by heart the Church Catechism and use the 
Bible as a reading-book. In this matter we differ very widely 
from the Germans. All their classes have a religious lesson 
every day, the younger children in the German Bible, the elder 
in Greek Testament and Church History, and in both cases 
great pains are taken to give them accurate instruction in the 
Gospel according to Martin Luther. Yet the effect of all this 



14 R. H. Quick 

systematic religious teaching, as far as my observation goes, is 
small. The educated classes in Germany, whether more or less 
moral than the corresponding classes in England, are far more 
consciously estranged from Christianity. With me then it is an 
open question in what way and to what extent grown-up people 
are bound to study theology themselves and to procure in- 
struction in it for their children. One point is clear, that the 
first thing to cultivate in the young is reverence, and reverence 
is surely in danger if you take a class in ' Religion ' just as you 
take a class in Grammar. No good, I think, can come of con- 
necting sacred truths and persons with associations so disagree- 
able to a schoolboy as ordinary school-work. Above all things 
I object to the plan of making the Greek Testament succeed or 
supersede the Greek Delectus. Emerson says somewhere that 
to the poet, the saint and the philosopher all distinction of 
sacred and profane ceases to exist. All things become sacred 
alike. As the schoolboy, however, does not as yet belong to 
any of these classes, if the distinction ceases to exist for him 
all things will become profane alike, and there is great danger 
of this if the words of our Lord are dwelt upon chiefly as 
illustrations of the rules of Greek accidence. 

"Religious instruction maybe conveyed in a most impressive 
way through the medium of worship. I do not know that our 
daily service is the best possible for boys, but if any other were 
substituted for it, it should resemble it ; in form it should be as 
varied as possible and should give the congregation much to 
say or sing. After all, religious education is mainly ' that 
which is imbibed from the moral atmosphere which a child 
breathes, the natural language of parents and tutors, not their 
set speeches and set lectures.' 

"If the religious element be a mere teaching of dogma, the 
education as it seems to me will be just as well without it. 
Helps lays stress on preparing the way to moderation and open- 
mindedness by teaching boys that all good men are not of the 
same way of thinking. It is indeed a miserable error to teach 



Hurstpierpoint 1 5 

a yonng person that his small ideas are the measure of the uni- 
verse and that all who do not accept the formularies of the 
creed to which he belongs are less enlightened than himself. 
If a young man is so brought up, h,e either carries intellectual 
blinkers all his life, or what is far more probable, he finds that 
something he has been taught is false, and forthwith begins to 
doubt everything. On the other hand it is a necessity with the 
young to believe, and it would be impossible, even if we wished 
it, to get a youth to look upon everything about which there is 
any variety of opinion as an open question. But young people 
may be taught reverence and humility, they may be taught to 
reflect how infinitely greater the facts of the universe must be 
than our poor thoughts about them and how inadequate are 
words to express even our imperfect thoughts. Then he will 
not fancy that all truth has been taught him in his formularies, 
he will not suppose that he understands all the truth which 
these formularies, as far as they are able, express." 

Hurst. 29 Oct. '67 

" I came here last week and on Saturday took the first work, 
which was with the lowest form, as I succeed P. 

" Having had to take two forms of over 30 boys each in 
Geography I am nearly rabid. They had learnt all the English 
counties with their county towns and the rivers on which these 
towns lie. Who is the better for knowing that Launceston is 
the county town of Cornwall ? A boy or a man who becomes 
connected with the county finds it out directly ; but the know- 
ledge is absolutely useless and utterly uninteresting to anyone 
else. We cry up our business and insist on the importance of 
education, and then when boys are entrusted to us we compel 
them to cram lists of useless words and call that education ! 

" As far as I can see, no one here thinks whether one 
thing is better worth knowing than another. The boys must 
learn something — no matter what — e.g. the small print in 
K. Edward VI's Latin Grammar. I declare positively that of 



1 6 R. H. Quick 

all the stupid things I know under the sun there is nothing to 
my mind so inexpressibly stupid as putting boys who are just 
beginning Latin to learn these lists of exceptions &c." 

Surrey County School 

Mr Cubitt being impressed with the needs of farmers and 
tradesmen in the way of education determined to start a school 
for that class in the county for which he was member. The 
rector of Cranleigh induced him to fix it in that parish. A 
council of 24 was formed, a subscription list was opened and 
about £6,000 was raised among the landowners of Surrey. 
Plans were prepared and approved for a school building to 
cost ^10,000 but the deficit of ^4,000 was not forthcoming, 
and when some two years later Dr Merriman was appointed 
headmaster he found an incomplete building on a most unsuit- 
able site. Never did a great school begin with less promising 
auspices, and according to the Diary it was only the extra- 
ordinary business capacity of its first head that prevented a 
fiasco. 

Quick describes the first batch of pupils as frightfully 
ignorant, though some of them had been at school for years. 
" Our best boy is an ex-Blue-Coat boy and he is very little 
before the rest." The teaching at first was necessarily confined 
almost entirely to English, reading aloud, dictation, learning of 
poetry &c. For discipline a modified prefectorial system was 
tried, prefects having no power of punishing. 

Hurstpierpoint and Cranleigh 
"On Wednesday, 18 Dec. 1867, I left Hurst and went to 
Cranleigh." This text in the diary introduces a contrast 
between the two schools after the manner of Plutarch's Parallel 
Lives, which is hardly of sufficient historical interest to be 
preserved. We may however abstract from local circumstances 
some valuable hints on the theory of discipline. To all methods 
of repression — absolute silence in the class-room, keeping a 
tight hand on boys, especially at the close of term, allowing 



An ideal headmaster 17 

no shouting in the play-ground, &c. — Quick was a sworn foe. 
He notes with a half-malicious satisfaction that the warning he 
had received that if you give boys an inch they will take an ell 
was not justified by the event. In the dormitory of which he 
was master solo-singing and choruses were allowed for the last 
week of term. In other dormitories where silence was enjoined 
there was smashing of crockery, scribbling on the walls, &c. 
In his dormitory there was none. 

Here is a vivid picture of a "breaking up" in a school 
where chartered freedom prevailed. 

" As for noise I heard the uproar in the still evening half a 
mile off. All the masters but one had already left, but the 
good feeling between the boys and him was so complete that 
there was not the least danger of turbulence or wanton mischief. 
A splendid supper in hall was set out for the boys. After 
supper they sang songs which were roared till some of the 
singers were nearly black in the face. Then came cheers 
for the masters, the Eleven, the football team, &c. The 
boys were wild with excitement and the Headmaster was in 
almost as high spirits as they, yet when he wished them 
good-night they all went off quietly to bed by themselves and 
were all asleep in ten minutes, having let off all their steam 
below." 

But for a headmaster to keep order on these terms, Quick 
adds, he must be a man with a will like iron, he must be a 
kindly man and he must have good spirits — a rare combination 
of qualifications. 

One other general remark. Hearty good feeling between 
masters and boys is essential for the prosperity of a public 
school, but hardly less important is the homogeneity or 
solidarity of the staff. Too often it is the case in public 
schools that " the head forms one interest, the senior masters 
a second, and the junior masters a third." Too often in 
the smaller grammar schools " the thoughts and interests of 
the masters are hardly more extended than those of the boys, 
c 



18 R. H. Quick 

and in the dearth of other topics men devote their leisure to 
making elaborate studies of each others' defects." 

Se If- c as ligation : an experiment 

" When I was at Hurstpierpoint we all used the cane. It 
occurred to me that we could not well judge of the amount of 
pain we inflicted and I experimented on myself by giving my- 
self a sharp ' pandy.' Of course the experiment could not be 
quite satisfactory, for pain like knowledge must be considered ad 
modum recipients, and a cut that one boy would laugh at might 
cause anguish to another. But my experiment was not a fruit- 
less one. I found the pain I gave myself far more than I 
expected and as I had treated myself indulgently I feared I had 
often given a far more severe punishment than I had intended. 
My practice therefore for the future was much modified by 
this single flagellation. I wish we could more often put our- 
selves in the place of our pupils and so learn or suffer what we 
require of them." 

Assistants and Headmasters. A squall and blue sky 

" In E. Barbier's book La Discipline I come across some 
interesting passages on the relations between junior masters and 
le Superieicr. The French think out and discuss in print many 
things which the English leave to each man to run up against, 
and form his own notion of, after the contact. Of course the 
relations between superior and inferior are carefully regulated 
in Jesuit Schools. With us there is nothing but a vague tradition 
to settle such matters. 

" I look back on my own varied experience and think that 
young masters might learn some useful lessons from old ones, 
but, as far as I can remember, they never struck me when I 
was a young master myself. I was not particula rl y bumptious, 
but the notion of trying to benefit by the expei>nce of my 
seniors never came into my head. In most of our schools — ■ 
foundation or public schools, I mean — the headmaster is both 



Assistants and headmasters 19 

in age and attainments much in advance of the other masters. 
As a rule they do not think enough of the school and think too 
much of him. An assistant master sees this or that defect, 
but he probably considers it ' no business of his.' Perhaps he 
goes as far as pointing it out to the headmaster, but if the 
headmaster does not at once see things through his eyes, he 
settles for the future that the headmaster is responsible, and 
perhaps instead of doing what he can to decrease the mischief, 
takes a perverse pleasure in watching it increase and saying to 
himself, and often to others too, ' I pointed this out to the 
head, but he only snubbed me.' The lower kind of assistant 
master thinks of the whole concern as the headmaster's and 
takes no more interest in the welfare of the school than the 
ordinary domestic servant in the welfare of the family as such. 
Just as I fancy in the servants' hall the talk commonly turns on 
master and mistress, so in the common room of public schools 
the talk about the headmaster is almost incessant. We do 
not usually tend to general views. We think of ourselves, of 
the school, of the headmaster, without any reference to people 
in similar circumstances. That which interests most in the 
headmaster is his ' peculiarities.' It is perhaps true generally 
that for one man or boy who can discern a headmaster's, or 
indeed any man's, strong points, there will be a hundred who 
can spot his weak points ; so the weak points will be the most 
talked about. Cordial co-operation between the head and his 
assistants is rather the exception than the rule. Men get into 
a habit of grumbling. There will probably be a grumbler or 
two by nature among the staff. The others listen and are 
amused : by degrees they to some extent follow suit." 

A petty incident, though it loomed big at the time, is worth 
recording in as many lines as it takes pages in the Diary, for it 
illustrates Quick's straightforwardness and chivalry. For a whole 
term there had been smothered dissatisfaction among the staff — 
constant grumblings concerning the imperfect domestic arrange- 
ments for the masters' dinner. These at last found vent in an 



20 R. H. Quick 

acrimonious letter written by one of the assistants to the Head- 
master. In the recriminations that followed Quick considered 
that his own conduct was indirectly called in question and at 
once proceeded to ' have it out ' with his chief. The result 
is best given in the final words of the interview : - You've been 
telling me that H. is a very good fellow. Go and tell him that 
I'm a good fellow, and we shall be friends again.' The dinners 
were reformed, and H. was not dismissed. 

The moral that Quick draws is that in cases of social dis- 
agreements or misunderstandings it is generally wiser to speak 
than to write. The written letter remains and rankles, and 
further, an attack in writing always seems premeditated and 
therefore more offensive. 

To sum up this chapter of his life I will give his portraiture 
as drawn by one of his Cranleigh pupils. It came to me as a 
spontaneous tribute to his memory contributed to the Journal 
of Education. It appeared anonymously but I have the writer's 
leave to add his name — Mr John Russell, Assistant Master in 
University College School, London, and sometime Warden of 
the University College Settlement in Gordon Square. 

Cranleigh. By an old Pupil 

' A few days ago I heard of my old master's sudden illness ; 
to-day I have heard of his death. Never, I think, in my life 
has any news given me more pain. I have so learned to lean 
upon his advice, to find strength in his encouragement, and to 
look upon his approval as the prize most worth winning, that 
now I am to have neither any more, endeavour, in this first 
shock of loss, seems vain, and hope a mockery. But to- 
morrow I shall remember how much I already owe him, and 
this memory, if I was ever worthy of his friendship, will colour 
my life to the end. 

' Among the many friends of his own age who are sor- 
rowing for him, there will be no lack of voices to tell the 



Cranleigh 2 1 

story of his life, to put his work in its true light, to make him 
better known now that he is gone than when he was still with 
us. Will it be thought an impertinence for one who might 
have been his son, and who indeed regarded him with all a 
son's affection and respect, to add a faint touch or two to 
the picture ? 

' Our friendship — I think he would have called it so — is of 
very long standing, dating back to a time nearly twenty-five 
years ago, when he was second-master at Cranleigh, and I a 
small schoolboy of ten. 

' It seems to me now that everybody loved him and valued 
his good opinion, and that nobody would have dreamed of 
deliberately vexing him. What particular scraps of knowledge 
I owe to his teaching, I cannot remember ; I have only the 
memory of his influence, and this makes me think he must 
have been an ideal master. Certainly, none other that I ever 
came under so won my whole heart. To be in Mr Quick's 
class, to be asked to Mr Quick's room, to be on Mr Quick's 
side at football, made school-life worth living. Two or three 
times a-week there was compulsory (Association) football for 
the whole school, and the sides being generally ' A to K,' 
and Q being luckily in my half of the alphabet, I nearly 
always had the good fortune to run behind my favourite. In 
those pre-scientific days, when ' off-side ' was 'off-side,' there 
was no getting in front of the ball, and many and many a 
time have I pantingly backed up the active, burly figure in 
a good dribble from goal to goal, learning the while, without 
ever suspecting it, to use my limbs, and love pluck and skill 
and fair-play. More than twenty years ago, and yet the 
picture is scarcely blurred : the cheery voice, the kind, eager 
face, the long growth of red beard, even the white flannels 
and the grey shirt. 

' The mention of voice and beard calls up another picture, 
cherished by others besides myself — Mr Quick singing. He 
sang as he played football, as indeed he did everything he 



22 R. H. Qzcick 

thought worth doing, with heart and soul. He had a pecu- 
liarly full and telling voice, and sang with free emphatic 
movement of the head. To watch him in chapel, leading 
the Magnificat to his favourite chant — which I hum as I 
write, though I have forgotten its name — mouth wide, and 
beard rising and falling with the syllables on his white sur- 
plice, was our delight. 

' I think it may have been because I was in the choir that 
I came in for so large a share of invitations to his room. 
How our hearts leapt at those invitations ! What good times 
we had! Was ever such jam and cake? Was ever a game 
like puff and dart? Was ever a host like ours? How he 
must have loved boys to win such love in return ! How (I 
expect) he labelled us, and ticketed us, and put us away in 
those wonderful mental pigeon-holes of his, respecting our 
individuality and bearing with our humours, almost as though 
we had been grown men. And we were not put away to 
be forgotten, for years afterwards, when I met him again at 
Cambridge, he remembered me in a moment, and only a few 
months ago in one of his much-prized letters he addressed 
me by my old school nickname, which I myself had almost 
forgotten. 

' My good fortune followed me everywhere, for I was also 
'in Mr Quick's class/ though for what subject or subjects 
I have forgotten. I think it must have been for English, 
amongst other things, for I distinctly remember how at times 
he would delight us by stopping work early and reading 
aloud. My first introduction to Tom Brown at Oxford was 
by hearing him thus read the account of the boat-race. I 
think he must have read it marvellously well, for I have 
never forgotten the almost breathless interest with which I 
listened for the end. I remember, too, that he was the ex- 
aminer for some reading prizes — given, I have little doubt, by 
himself — and I do not suppose I liked him any the less for 
awarding the junior prize as he did. He was also librarian, 



Cranleigh 23 

and no doubt gave many a boy a love for books, who, but 
for him, would have remained a hopeless Philistine. I have 
a vague memory of class-matches also, which I think he must 
have introduced, and which left such a lasting and satisfactory 
impression upon my mind that, as soon as I began to teach, I 
adopted the plan, and have never since given it up. 

' I only once remember to have seen him angry, and that 
was in class, and with me. I was sitting next to my great 
friend — my great friend then, and ever since — who would 
ratify every word that I have written. What we were sup- 
posed to be doing I don't know, but whatever it was we 
were neglecting it, and tittering together over some foolish 
thing that one of us had whispered or drawn upon his paper. 
Suddenly Mr Quick noticed us and called us to order. But 
his words, I am ashamed to say, had no other effect than to 
make us both burst into one of those unreasonable, yet at 
the same time absolutely uncontrollable, fits of laughter that 
schoolboys, and schoolboys alone, are subject to. He sternly 
bade us be quiet, but we only laughed the more. Then he 
rose from his seat and came over to us. I need hardly say 
that he did not strike us, but of what he did or said I have 
no memory. I can only remember a mighty anger, and that 
after a few incoherent words of excuse we were cowed and 
still. I had hoped some day to remind him of the incident, 
and beg his pardon. 

' l How long he remained at Cranleigh I do not know, but 
he must have left while I was still a comparatively small boy. 
I well remember our excitement and sorrow on hearing that 
we were going to lose him. In those days rod and birch 
were in full swing there — they may be still — and a notion 
got about that Mr Quick, to express his disapproval of such 
barbarous means of maintaining discipline, had decided to 
leave. After this, of course, he was more our hero than 

1 He came at the opening of the school, Michaelmas, 1865, and left in 
December, 1867. 



24 -R> H. Quick 

ever, and we felt somehow that in losing him we were being 
given over to the enemy. The last time I ever saw him I 
told him of this old belief of ours. He smiled, as only he 
could smile, and said we were wrong ; but I did not take his 
smile to mean that he was a friend of birch and rod. 

' It must have been about ten years after leaving Cranleigh 
that he gave a course of lectures at Cambridge on the History 
of Education. I was then an undergraduate, and though I 
had not seen or heard of him for all those years, and cared 
no straw (being still unconverted) for any History but Church 
History, coming upon his name one day by accident, its old 
charm drew me to his lecture-room. Yes, it was the same 
man, my boyish hero, and as I sat and looked — I don't think 
I listened — all my old love and worship came back, never 
again to be disturbed. After the lecture many stayed behind 
to speak with him. I waited patiently till all were gone, and 
then, with flushed cheeks, went up to him and put out my 
hand and spoke. He not only knew me at once, but seemed 
as glad to see me as I was to see him. 

' From that time we have never lost touch. All my subse- 
quent life has been stayed by his kindly hand, and cheered 
by his kindly voice, and this, despite the fact that I long ago 
renounced the faith he always held so dear. 

' He is dead, my dear, dear Master ; but he remains my 
dear Master still.' 

Educational Reformers 

The year that elapsed between leaving Cranleigh and 
joining the staff at Harrow was occupied almost entirely with 
the writing of Essays on Educational Reformers. When the 
idea of the book first took definite shape we are not informed, 
but the germ was certainly implanted during Quick's visits to 
Germany. At Hamburg, Leipzig and elsewhere he made the 
acquaintance of the leading ' Schoolmen ' and conversed for 
the first time with masters who had made a study of their 



Educational Reformers 25 

profession, and applied in their school teaching methods that 
they had previously thought out for themselves. "I have 
found," he writes, " that in the History of Education, not only 
good books, but all books, are in German or some other foreign 
language." To exhort public school masters to study German 
Padagogik was, he knew, waste of breath, but he hoped to 
induce the more thoughtful among them to read short sketches 
of the great masters of Educational Method — Comenius, Locke, 
Rousseau, Pestalozzi — when presented in clear outlines and 
with special reference to the present state of secondary edu- 
cation in England. What gives the book its great charm and 
its chief value as an historical study, is its suggestiveness, its 
almost tentative attitude. The author is himself a student, 
feeling his way, digesting materials for his own use. He has 
no cut and dried theory to establish or illustrate, he judges 
each school and method by its fruits, he is an eclectic philo- 
sopher. Educational Reformers was not so much the result of 
an impulse to create something as to do something. He 
shrank from the suggestion of his friend Professor Seeley to 
add a final chapter summing up the proposals of the different 
Reformers. "That" (he notes with his usual modesty) "re- 
quired thought, and, like a schoolboy, I shirk thinking, though 
unlike most schoolboys, I am always ready for work or for 
receiving the thoughts of others." 

He felt moreover that besides a close and thorough, though 
not very prolonged, study of original authorities, he was bringing 
to his task a qualification that few previous English writers 
on education had possessed, a practical acquaintance with the 
subject. " As boy or master, I have been connected with no 
less than eleven schools, and my perception of the blunders of 
other teachers is derived mainly from the remembrance of my 
own." But as the concluding words of the Preface show, he 
was not very confident of realising even these modest ex- 
pectations : — "If the following pages attract but few readers, 
it will be some consolation, though rather a melancholy one, 



26 R. H. Quick 

that I share the fate of my betters." The book eventually 
brought him fame, and to American pirates considerable 
profit, of which he never shared a penny, but at the time it 
proved from the publisher's point of view a complete failure. 
It was years before the first edition of 500 was sold off and 
that not till the published price, 75". 6d., had been reduced to 
$s. 6d. After the first English edition had been exhausted 
there was a steady demand for the book, but not sufficient in 
the opinion of his publishers to justify a second edition. 
Quick, whose one thought was to promote the study of edu- 
cation and in particular to aid beginners who had not either 
the time or the ability to consult original authorities in Latin, 
French and German, was perfectly content to supply this demand 
by importing and selling at cost price one of the pirated 
American editions. In this way about 1500 copies were dis- 
posed of. Between the first and the second authorised edition 
nearly a quarter of a century intervened. For all these years, 
off and on, Quick had, as he expressed it, been "tinkering" at 
his book, buying every book and brochure that bore on his 
subject (more than he could possibly read), revising, annotating 
and adding supplementary chapters. As prefaces are seldom 
read, I venture to quote from the Preface to the second 
edition a graphic apologue in which he reflects on the first 
stage of his pilgrim's progress as viewed from his present 
standpoint. 

" When I was a young man {i.e. nearly forty years ago), I 
once did what those who know the ground would declare a 
very risky, indeed, a foolhardy thing. I was at the highest 
point of the Gemmi Pass in Switzerland, above the Rhone 
Valley : and being in a hurry to get down and overtake my 
party, I ran from the top to the bottom. The path in those 
days was not so good as it is now, and it is so near the 
precipice that a few years afterwards a lady in descending lost 
her head and fell over. No doubt I was in great danger of 
a drop of a thousand feet or so. But of this I was totally 



Educational Reformers 27 

unconscious. I was in a thick mist, and saw the path for a 
few yards in front of me and nothing more. When I think 
of the way in which this book was written three-and-twenty 
years ago, I can compare it to nothing but my first descent 
of the Gemmi. I did a very risky thing without knowing it. 
My path came into view little by little as I went on. All 
else was hid from me by a thick mist of ignorance. When 
I began the book I knew next to nothing of the Reformers, 
but I studied hard and wrote hard, and I turned out the essays 
within the year. This feat I now regard with amazement, 
almost with horror. Since that time I have given more years 
of work to the subject than I had then given months, and the 
consequence is I find I can write fast no longer. The mist has 
in a measure cleared off, and I cannot jog along in comfort as 
I did when I saw less." 

He had gratifying proofs that though he might be no 
prophet in his own country, his work was fully appreciated in 
the States. In the Boston Journal of Education of 4 Nov. 
1886, appeared a model list of books for teachers. The list had 
been composed by the Editor on the following plan. Twenty- 
three of the leading American educationists were applied to 
and the lists furnished by them collated by the Editor. In 
the published list the books were arranged in order, according 
to the number of times they had been recommended. 

" Oddly (and absurdly) my Educational Reformers heads 
the list with 17, Page's Theory and Practice of Teaching comes 
next with 15, and Fitch's Lectures next with 12 votes." 

As the first edition is now a rare book it will not be deemed 
superfluous to indicate the principal alterations and additions. 
The first two chapters of the second edition, a study on the 
Renaissance in its educational bearings, are entirely new. On 
comparing these chapters with those which immediately follow, 
on the Schools of the Jesuits, the reader cannot fail to notice 
the advance in originality, the wider and bolder generalisation, 
the firmer grasp and more definite statement of leading 



28 R. H. Quick 

principles. The chapter on Froebel, a replica of his article 
on Froebel in the Encyclopedia Britannic a is also entirely 
new. The studies of Sturm, Rabelais and the Port-Royal are 
remodelled and greatly enlarged. The concluding dialogue, 
an excrescence, but one that few could wish excised, charac- 
teristic as it is of his attitude and temperament, replaces a 
somewhat dry appendix which was wisely omitted. 

From the latest appreciation of the book by a Frenchman J 
who is thoroughly versed in the educational literature of Eng- 
land and Germany as well as of his own country, I translate 
a short passage as showing the high value set on the book 
by Continental authorities. ' Our author lays no claim to ori- 
ginality in the strictest sense of the word. With an ingenuous 
modesty which we must discount he tells us himself that many 
of his essays are mere compilations. There are indeed few 
works on education that he has not laid under contribution, 
and in the Preface to the first edition and the list of ' Books 
for Teachers ' of the second edition, he loyally acknowledges 
the sources from which he has drawn. He resembles the 
Matinean bee, if we may be allowed a hackneyed comparison. 
He possesses in a high degree the art of seizing the dominant 
thought of a writer, of assimilating it and reproducing it with- 
out commonplaces or unnecessary accessories. He has the 
rare knack of condensing into two or three pages the pon- 
derous tomes or undigested lucubrations of the authors whom 
he quotes. What he borrows is so thoroughly assimilated and 
identified with his own stock in trade, that he cannot keep 
separate accounts and finds it impossible to determine who 
should be credited with an idea. Whether the thoughts he 
sets before us are his own or another's, the language is all his 
own, the style clear and simple, set off by happy illustrations 
and apposite quotations.' 

1 UHistoire de V Education en Angleterre, par Jacques Parmentier, 
Professeur a la Faculte cles lettres de Poitiers (Perrin, 1896). 



Harrow 29 



Harrow 

In the autumn of 1869 Quick was most unexpectedly 
offered a mastership at Harrow. 

Harrow revisited Nov. 11, '69 

" To-day I have been down to Harrow, where to my infinite 
astonishment I have just got a mastership. The whole thing 
seems much more like a dream than a reality. I did feel 
pleasure, but one's feelings are blunted and my sensations were 
much less keen than they were* in '46. Though I had not 
been at Harrow since Fred [his younger brother] was at school 
there (about 18 years ago), I remember the place and every- 
thing about it as well as any place in which I have spent years. 
I went with Bowen to the Fourth Form room for ' bill.' 1 It 
was a much quieter affair than in my time. The room seems 
smaller — otherwise quite unaltered." 

He was delighted at the prospect of returning to his old 
school and serving under his old schoolfellow Dr Butler, for 
whose character and abilities he had a profound admiration. 
The change too from the Spartan fare and the almost monastic 
regimen cf middle-class schools like Hurstpierpoint and 
Cranleigh, to the comparative luxury and the social advantages 
of Harrow, was not without its attractions. Though by pro- 
fession he was a thoroughgoing radical in all scholastic matters, 
he felt none the less the immense educational advantage of 
historic traditions, fine buildings and such surroundings as 
appeal to a boy's sense of beauty and veneration. " I don't 
think (he writes) we should have been as conscious as we were 
of the idea of the school at Hurstpierpoint, had we not had 
the Chapel and the Hall. Certainly at Cranleigh I missed 
these things terribly." And after attending a school concert in 
the New Speech Room, "Yesterday the sight of the whole 

!The Roll Call. 



30 R. H. Quick 

school assembled in the Speech Room was to me not only 
intensely pleasurable, but something more too ; " though he 
adds too truly, " Harrow Chapel never was of the smallest 
material advantage to me. It is weak and dwarfing." To 
Society, indeed, in the fashionable sense of the word, Quick 
was absolutely indifferent, and the only personal luxury in 
which he indulged was books. Not that he felt at any time a 
leaning towards asceticism, but his mind was always so absorbed 
by the work in which he was engaged, whether contemplative or 
active, that he never had time to think of food and raiment and 
minor creature comforts. So again in his social relations he 
was a true democrat. He acted on no preconceived theory of 
equality or fraternity, but he naturally and without an effort 
made friends of all, without distinction of rank, who were 
drawn to him by common pursuits and interests. The more 
fastidious of his colleagues were shocked and sometimes 
scandalised by the strange creatures who came to visit him 
at Ivy Cottage — ushers out at elbow, Board School masters 
weak in their h's, and German Lehrer unacquainted with soap. 
Like the Vicar of Wakefield's guests, to carry on a comparison 
suggested by Dr Butler, these motley visitors ' all sat at the 
same table and none complained of the gooseberry wine pro- 
vided by their host.' His Harrow life, as the extracts from 
his diaries will show, did not fulfil his expectations. He was 
handicapped in his work by chronic headaches and as a 
consequence subject to fits of mental depression. He was 
naturally a slow worker, and the incessant 'grind' which is 
the lot of most Harrow and Eton masters was too much for 
him. He is always complaining that, do what he will, he 
cannot get abreast of his work. A friendly though unsympa- 
thetic colleague writes to me, ' I fear I cannot tell you much 
about our old friend Quick. During such time as I was at 
Harrow with him I always enjoyed his kindly ways, but did 
not know him intimately like Hallam and Marshall. I re- 
member, I fear, most his complaints — it was not long before 



Harrow 3 1 

he left — his headaches and quite startling difficulties in adding 
up a few weeks' marks, &c. and the effort it gave him to write 
a short sermon at long intervals.' Undoubtedly too he fell 
into the error of overconscientiousness and carried his love of 
strict accuracy into a province where it is mostly labour lost. 
It may not be a doctrine to be preached on the house-tops, 
but it is none the less true that a wise passiveness, a knowledge 
when ' et premere et laxas dare habenas ' is a valuable equip- 
ment for a schoolmaster. Without this gift it will happen, as 
in Quick's case, that an idle boy who knocks off an exercise in 
ten minutes, may inflict on his master an imposition of twenty 
minutes in correcting it. 

The constitution of a great public school resembles in some 
respects that of a State Department like the Treasury or the 
War Office. It is settled mainly by tradition and unwritten 
law ; the machinery is antiquated, cumbrous, intricate, and such 
as no publicist, or statesman with a perfectly free hand, would 
dream of adopting or recommending for adoption. But in spite 
of much friction and waste of time and brain power it does its 
work in a way, and a new Secretary of State, however great his 
ardour for reform, finds himself comparatively powerless against 
the traditions of the Office and the conservatism of the 
permanent officials. Such a system is not likely to suit a 
philosopher who is always examining into the reasons of things 
and trying to construct for himself an ideal world. The 
ordinary master, especially if he be only an assistant master, 
accepts with a stronger or weaker protest what seems to him 
the inevitable, and quiets any scruples that may arise with the 
Stoic's maxim ' Spartam nactus es, hanc exorna.' Quick was 
neither a Stoic nor an Epicurean. The task assigned him he 
carried out loyally, conscientiously and ungrudgingly, but he 
exercised freely the Englishman's privilege of grumbling, and 
he was throughout oppressed by the sense of being, as it were, 
handicapped by tradition and carrying weight in a race that 
would tax all his unimpeded powers of body and mind. 



32 R. H. Quick 

His reiterated complaint against the Harrow system (and 
Harrow may fairly be taken as a typical public school of his 
day) is absence of method or organic unity proceeding from 
wanton ignorance of educational principles and resulting in 
overworked masters and under-taught or ill-taught boys. The 
following entry is not a passing growl blurted forth at the end 
of some fag day, but the calm retrospect of later years. 

" Ste Beuve says that the University teachers of the middle 
of the 1 6th century had come to the worst stage possible ' la 
diversite dans la routine.' This was very much the state of 
things when I was a master at Harrow. Every man taught just 
as he liked. No attempt was made at any uniform system, but 
men were so over-worked that they could not get on without 
routine." 

With Harrow boys his relations were generally friendly, 
though they were mainly confined to school-time. The traditions 
of the place and the arrangement of hours make it almost im- 
possible for a master who has not a house to see anything of 
boys in play-time unless he happens to be an athlete and can 
share their games. The contrast between Harrow and Cranleigh 
boys struck him forcibly and the advantage was not always on 
the side of the more aristocratic school. " Individually {i.e. 
when one has any intercourse with them out of school) their 
manner is very good and one sees a considerable advantage 
they possess over the shy, awkward boys of middle class schools ; 
but in school I have seen worse manners here than anywhere. 
Yesterday was not the first time I have found big fellows behave 
in a way which was distinctly ungentlemanly." As a form 
master too he found more difficulty in holding the reins with 
such a team than with a Cranleigh set. For one thing the 
average age was greater, " in fact the most difficult age of all, 
because they have lost the docility of childhood and not yet 
acquired the self-respect of young men. . . . When I am well and 
in good spirits I enjoy taking a form like this, just as one enjoys 
riding a spirited horse that one feels one can manage. . . . Alas ! 



Impressionist Teaching 33 

too often the Educational Reformer disappears and the com- 
mon-form English Teacher takes his place directly I go into 
school. To-day I set P. senior 1000 lines for impertinence." 

With Mr E. E. Bowen, under whom as Head of the Modern 
Side most of Quick's work at Harrow was done, his relations 
were perfectly friendly, but no two men could have differed 
more widely in temperament, in cast of mind and in methods 
of teaching. It was a case not of the hare and the tortoise, but 
we might almost say of the swift and the mole. There is no 
denying that as judged by tangible and immediate results the 
mole was not in the running. The following extract is obviously 
one-sided and partial, but it is too valuable an exposition of 
the possible dangers of the impressionist method to be omitted, 
and Mr Bowen's reputation as a teacher is too firmly estab- 
lished to be touched by the personal criticism. 

" Bowen and I have very little in common as teachers. He 
is very rapid in every way. His great object is to arouse 
mental activity, so he goes over a great deal of ground ; brings 
in all sorts of collateral information and must content himself 
with a good deal of work in the rough. This is the sort of 
thing he sets — ' Is any modern expedition like that of Caesar? 
Are any modern people like the Britons? Are we Britons? 
Which of the form is most so? Is Napoleon III most nearly 
descended from Julius Caesar, Cassivellaunus, Commius or the 
Ubii ? ' This sort of questioning is very characteristic of 
Bowen's mind, in which activity is everything, results are 
nothing. I on the other hand, if I were more what I should 
like to be, and what I tend towards, am a complete antithesis 
to all this. I have contracted my area till it is perhaps 
absurdly small and by going over the same thing again and 
again with my pupils am conscious of running a risk of produ- 
cing mental nausea. 

" My notion of Bowen's teaching is that these boys will leave 
school having dimly become conscious of a lot of things, but 
with no certainty of anything beyond their own names. The 

D 



34 R> H. Quick 

more intelligent of them may have awakened interests which 
will be sure to get themselves fed, but these boys will be the 
exceptions, not the rule. Almost all experiments in teaching 
seem to me to fail for want of definiteness. The teachers who 
are most anxious to teach are just those who fail most in this 
respect. They know a good deal and want their boys to know 
a good deal also. So they do not stick to a text book, but 
plunge out in various directions with great labour to them- 
selves and — they find in the end — without much result in 
their pupils. I get to have a great disbelief in the possibility 
of awakening intellectual interests in boys — boys under sixteen 
at all events, and there is only one way in which they can be 
successfully taught. The subject matter must be small in 
quantity and very definite, and this must be worked into them 
by constant repetition. 

"Bowen seems to me like a man who wanting to knock in 
a lot of nails taps in one loosely, then taps in the second 
thereby shaking out the first, and so on. There may be some 
French nails knocked into these boys' minds but at present I 
have not come upon them. 

" I am sure the education our boys get, on its literary side 
at least, is extremely faulty. Intellectual tastes are probably 
checked rather than fostered by the boarding-house system. 
They require to be nourished in the young by personal in- 
fluence, but the masters see nothing of the boys except in 
school. The boys make their own world, from which grown 
people and the thoughts and interests of grown people are 
excluded. If you get boys to breakfast the only talk possible 
seems school shop, games, and so forth. The world of public 
events has little interest to them. The world of books still 
less. If they lived with more intellectual men they would get 
more intellectual interests. This want of interest is the thing 
that utterly defeats one in teaching." 

It would serve no good purpose to recall the particular 
incident of domestic history which evoked the following 



Harassing Legislation 35 

generalisation. Suffice it to say that somewhere in the seventies 
a magisterial decree went forth which was at the time bitterly 
resented by the boys. as an unprecedented interference with 
the liberty of the subject, but for which there were substantial 
reasons of State that could not be made public. 



" Harassing Legislation " 

"When Dizzy invented this phrase I thought it was one 
of his tricks of language. Tricks of this kind always impose 
on the public. Thus a parliamentary orator declares that 
his plans ' tho' new are not new-fangled.' He would be very 
much puzzled to find any difference between the two. There 
is a story of Chad (I think) who declared some action to be 
' not only doubtful but dubious.' Phrases of this sort sound 
the right thing and indicate clearly that the speaker does not 
like this or that, and all who agree in the dislike think the 
phrase excellent — just their sentiments. But Dizzy's harassing 
legislation had more in it than this. Lowe replied that all 
good legislation harassed interests that are hostile to the public 
interest ; and Bright said that the Jews in the wilderness 
doubtless thought the Ten Commandments harassing legislation. 
These answers were clever but beside the point. If on the 
whole the public gains vastly by a piece of legislation the 
legislation cannot be called harassing, though some people are 
harassed by it ; but there is a principle which is commonly 
received in this country and which the H. Spencer school 
of Liberals would push to great extremes, the principle which 
forbids State interference where it is not absolutely necessary. 
If things will go on fairly well of themselves it is not enough 
to show that in some respects they might be improved by 
legislation. We consider legislative interference to some extent 
an evil and it must be brought in only to correct a greater 
evil. . . . The principle of never legislating unless legislation 
is necessary to stop a decided evil is generally accepted in our 



36 R. H. Quick 

public schools. The boys have a consciousness of freedom 
from restraint in things immaterial and this consciousness has 
a very high educational value. A boy early learns self-respect 
when he finds he is respected by his seniors and is not worried 
about trifles. Unfortunately it is not easy to treat boys with 
respect — one feels one's power too much. But public school- 
masters do treat boys with tolerable respect and this is one 
of the good influences of the place. The principle however 
of respecting boys and not subjecting them to paltry unneces- 
sary restrictions is occasionally forgotten here." 

The following entries fairly represent, not perhaps Harrow 
boys, but Quick's relations to Harrow boys and his estimate 
of public school education, as formed at the time, though his 
determination to send his own boy (as a home boarder) to 
Harrow shows that it must have been somewhat modified on 
calm reflection. 

Relation of boys and masters 

" It's a pity that masters see so little of boys. I am sure 
one's relations with boys in school would be better if they had 
other conceptions of the master than of a slave-driver, and that 
the master would treat the boys with more consideration if 
they did not always come before him as ' prisoners at the bar.' 
When I was a boy I was so impressed by the coarseness and 
the sin so prominent in school life, as the boy sees it, that I 
thought I would never send a boy from home till he was 14 or 
15, and then I would not send him to a public school. Friend 
B., no doubt for the same reason, thought he would never 
send a boy from home at all ; and yet he is in a small house 
here and very happy." 

A boy sent to apologise to R. H. Q. 

" This ' apology ' is the vilest humbug, as I know of old. A 
boy offends a superior and the authorities make it part of his 
punishment that he shall tell lies to him. In nine cases out of 



Boys and Masters 37 

ten it means making a boy say he is sorry when he is not. To 
do R. justice he has not lied a fraction beyond what was 
demanded of him, indeed he may not have lied at all, for 
he came and stated his view of the case merely and said that 
he thought at the time he was justified in refusing to construe 
when I put him on, but now was in doubt about it, though he 
thought I had been harsh with him. His manner was not 
defiant and I like him the better for saying what he thinks 
instead of cringing." 

Boys' indifference to learning 

" One's main difficulty in teaching boys is their utter in- 
difference to learning. The industrious boys are eager for 
marks ; the rest look upon the master as an importunate 
creditor and do just what they think will be sufficient to keep 
him quiet. Bowen the other day required his class to learn 
and to be able to write out a list of the Kings of England with 
dates. I found that H., a boy of sixteen, had committed to 
memory the two lists quite independently of one another, and 
having made some slip in the list of names he could not get 
his series to coincide when he had to write them out. He 
always had a date too many." 

Boys will not learn thoroughly 

" One does one's best to get work thoroughly done, but 
boys don't understand what thorough learning is. When I look 
over a piece of German for school, I'll be bound I spend as 
much time over it as some of the boys who think they have 
learnt the lesson well. Indeed if boys tried to do the work set 
them thoroughly they would never have time to get through it. 
Experience has shown me that boys will get to know something 
about a lesson, the amount of that something varying with the 
individual, but not with the length of the lesson. Beyond this 
they won't go, and if you make the lesson short they simply 



38 R. H. Qitick 

spend less time in preparing them. The only way of really 
getting boys to know things properly is to go over and over the 
same ground in class. But how are you to do this and yet 
employ boys in preparation time? for if you tell them to go 
over back work by themselves, they simply won't do it. They 
know that, they think. So the necessity of keeping something 
like a fixed ratio between preparation time and school time 
almost forbids the amount of repetition which is essential for 
good teaching." 

A good Ha,7'row story 

" T. H. Steele, says the legend, was told that there was 
cribbing in his form. He orated them thereon — said he had 
heard that some boys used unfair means in preparing lessons 
&c. The boy in particular he suspected was Buller the 
cricketer, but when he asked the boys who had used cribs 
to stand up, all stood except Buller. Steele was sorely puzzled. 
1 Buller,' he said, ' are you quite sure you have never used 
a translation?' 'Yes, Sir.' ' How then did you manage?' 
' Never looked at a lesson, Sir.' " 

Athletolatry 

" Yesterday I was talking to P., an intelligent boy who is 
not an athlete. He assumed as a matter of course, as a law of 
nature, that was no more a grievance than the trade winds, that 
a boy could not be popular unless he was good at games. 
His theory given without the least irony was this — grown-up 
people are popular in society in proportion to their possessions. 
A boy's physical strength and skill are his possessions and he 
takes rank accordingly. By P.'s account a boy might be liked 
even if he were successful in school work, provided he were 
clever and did not spend much time upon it, but nobody 
would be liked who 'swotted.' ' I believe,' said he, 'that the 
fear of being chaffed or bullied for swotting keeps fellows from 
work more than anything else.' This then is the training that 



A thletolatry 3 9 

boys get in a public school. They cannot pursue their own 
ideal without restraint. Does the body politic suffer more 
from the class of pleasure-worshippers thus engendered or from 
the habitual criminals ? " 

The seamy side of schoolboy life 

" The ' two worlds ' of Disraeli's Sybil have a parallel in the 
two worlds of a large school. Very seldom does a master get 
any genuine insight into the real world, the world not of 
theories or of reine Vemunft, but of interests, joys and sorrows, 
hopes and fears, which lie so near him. I have lately got 
just a glimpse into this world. All observant masters must 
have noticed the bloom gradually rubbed off the new boy, 
seen his face lose its smile, his manner its openness, his very 
work its token of care and interest. Of course I am speaking 
of the boy reared at home. The private school boy has 
probably everything to gain and nothing to lose from the 
public school. But the boy who has associated much with 
grown people at home generally brings a freedom from restraint 
in his dealings with masters which is specially the object of the 
schoolboy's hatred and derision. The new boy is ' cocky ' or 
' his mammy's darling ' and all the energy of his companions is 
directed to curing him of these foibles and bringing him into 
regulation form." 

Studium discendi voluntate quae cogi non potest constat 

Quint, lib. 1. cap. 3. 

"Here we come to the grand obstacle which makes learning 
at a school like Harrow out of the question. Most of the 
parents don't care about their boys learning classics and think 
with some reason that modern languages, if acquired at all, 
must be acquired elsewhere. So the boys themselves who 
take their cue from their parents don't want to learn. They 
1 prepare the lessons ' in a perfunctory way, for the master 



40 R< H. Quick 

might punish them if they didn't, but as for acquiring anything 
or understanding anything, no notion of it ever enters their 
heads." 

Routine 

" There is a striking passage in one of the old essayists in 
which he describes his reflections on seeing two masons spend- 
ing the day in rubbing two slabs of stone together to polish 
them. Here, says he, are two beings who have a few years 
given them, as they believe, to prepare for eternity and a great 
part of this time they spend in doing work which is hardly 
worth doing at all and which might be done by machinery 
better than by manual labour. 

" We English generally, and schoolmasters in particular, are 
constantly rubbing stones together without the excuse of the 
masons that we are driven to it in order to earn our daily 
bread. We have life, energy, power of thought, given us, and 
we don't exactly know what to do with them. We feel a sort 
of responsibility for our use of them and this feeling is held in 
check by routine work. So long as we are doing something 
which has an object in it and that a good object in its way we 
suppose it is all right. Whether much higher objects might 
not be attained as well as the lower, if we gave ourselves time 
to think about them, is a consideration we put out of sight as 
much as possible. The complicated system of routine work 
in which I have let myself get involved here and in which I 
find a sort of pleasure is a good specimen of the Englishman's 
usual way. It is not in my case that I don't know what to do 
with my leisure. For instance I never tire of reading and yet 
at present, and indeed generally, I never allow myself the 
luxury of reading. So long as I am doing work which is 
hardly worth doing at all and which most men could do better 
(i.e. looking over exercises and adding up marks) I feel quite 
content. 

"How oddly we English differ from the Latin races who 



A Whole-school Day 41 

looked upon business simply as negotium, 'the negation of 
leisure.' I live in a state of constant grind, have no time for 
reading or thought and- feel that I suffer from thus turning 
myself into a part of the scholastic apparatus ; and yet I like it, 
and if I could get au-dessus de mes affaires and feel that I was 
a thoroughly efficient part in the machinery, I should even 
enjoy it. Yet what a narrow emotionless life it is ! I am like 
a horse turning a wheel in a mine. I hope I shan't find when 
I come into the daylight (if ever I do) that I have lost my 
sight. 

" The difference in one's feelings and capacities now that I 
happen to be ati-dessus from what they were when I was au- 
dessous is really almost as great as between having one's head 
under water and above water." 

Time-table of an ordinary day's work at Harrow 

"Down at 6. Worked at Prendergast and French con- 
struing till school at 7.30. Breakfast 9.15 to 9.45- Then 
maps, exercises, &c. till 12 o'clock school. From 1 to 1.45 
lunch. From 1.45 to 3 prepare French construing and com- 
pose German exercise. From 3 to 4.30 in school. 4.30 to 
5.30 looking over exercises. 5.30 to 6.30 Caesar lesson. 8 to 
10.30 looking over German exercise." 

A day of 13 hours nearly continuous work. This, as he 
confesses, is partly due to slowness in correcting exercises, and 
partly to conscientiousness in preparing work. On the latter 
point he says what ail masters must have felt, though few are 
able consistently to act on their convictions, that he cannot 
take a form with comfort unless he has gone over the work and 
thought over the lesson before going into school. 

After this we are quite prepared for his confession that his 
powers of discipline are apt to flag before the end of the day. 

" We always in our forecasts both for boys and for ourselves 
reckon on so much work for so much time, but in point of 
fact one can do twice as much in some hours as in others. 



42 R. H. Quick 

One is hardly the same being at the beginning and at the end 
of a day. At first school one has no difficulty in preventing 
whispering ; at last school I cannot at present stop it. 

" I am quite conscious that many (probably most) of my 
lessons are very poor, but I don't quite see how to improve, 
and the fact is that one's energy is so taxed to get through 
one's work that one has none to spare for any attempt after an 
ideal standard. 

" The so-called ' teacher ' of boys is not a teacher at all but 
an exactor of work. What a comfort it would be if by any 
change we could transfer our energy into the direction of 
teaching instead. This is the distinction between the school 
teacher and the University coach. If we could only hit on 
anything that boys wanted to learn we might change our 
method completely. 

" In considering the comparative merits of young and 
middle-aged masters there are the energy and elasticity of 
spirits of the one to be set against the experience of the other. 
The exuberant life of the young man is like a flame to which 
work is as fuel, but with us who have turned forty the flame 
has dropped to mere smouldering. One is surprised at the 
immense amount of work which some men get through, but 
the fact is that those who fail, as I do, in catching up my 
work do not fail so much for want of time as for want of 
energy. When energy is weak, things which one has no 
inclination to do either are left undone or, as more commonly 
happens, are done slowly and so one falls in arrears. 

" The only thing that makes my life tolerable is that I am on 
a friendly footing with the boys and feel that I have a fair hold 
upon them. 

" I hate it (German prose) and it's a very bad sign indeed 
when the master does not like the lesson. Time was when I 
delighted in most of my lessons but here with me there are 
only a few which succeed well enough to be pleasurable to the 
master. 



Scripture Lessons 43 

" I don't know how it is, but whereas it used to be my 
greatest pleasure to go into school, I would now rather have 
an hour's stone-breaking." 

Scriptitre Lessons 

"The truth is that as I drifted away from the High Church 
party (now many years ago) I found that I did not understand 
the Scriptures, and without any intention of doing so I gave up 
the study of them. In parish work one found no time, in 
school work no necessity, and since I have been here I have 
been worked too hard to have leisure for study of any kind. 
Now I have more time and my old pleasure in studying the 
N. T. is reviving. But the boys seem to have no ideas con- 
nected with the Bible and very much less knowledge than we 
had when I was a boy. 

" On Sundays my boys come for an hour to be heard some 
chapters of the O. T. which they are supposed to have read by 
themselves. It would be strange indeed if the same writings 
were perfectly adapted to direct the mode of life of a people 
like the Jews in the wilderness and to serve as a lesson for 
public school boys in the 19th century. I generally read some 
book to the boys for the last half of the hour. Monday, first 
school is ' divinity ' also. This consists in translating some 
French N. T. and saying some by heart. It is to all intents 
and purposes a lesson in French." 

Old Testament Lessons 

" Conservative as I am, I cannot get reconciled to the weekly 
lesson in Joshua &c. It makes me think of Herschel's announce- 
ment that nutritious bread may be made from sawdust. But 
those who have a difficulty in making bread from wheat are not 
likely to succeed with sawdust. The popular way of treating 
the O. T. — getting some vague ideas about the main lines of 
history, and picking out here and there ' jewels five words long,' 
such as ' I will not leave thee nor forsake thee ' has the great 



44 R> H- Quick 

merit of simplicity, but when one comes to question boys 
about the chapters, one gets involved in names which can have 
no significance at all for us. ' Who was Jair ? A man who 
took Argob. Who was Nobah? A man who took Keneth.' 
All this sort of thing does not seem the least worth studying. 
The records are very meagre and are partly defaced. I cannot 
see that they can be studied with much profit." 

On shortening life 

" When we speak of a long or short life we ought to remember 
that two people may draw the same number of breaths and see 
the same number of sundowns and yet have very different 
amounts of life. First of all health makes a great difference ; 
some days are worth many others. Small ailments, especially 
headaches, actually destroy a large portion of one's time. Just 
at present a very moderate amount of work makes me as much 
employed as the hardest- worked man in Harrow, simply because 
a great deal of my time is destroyed by headaches. Then 
again the man who has the knack of knocking off routine work 
lives longer than one who potters over it. The proverb ' What- 
ever is worth doing at ail is worth doing well ' is nonsense, if it 
is taken to mean that we should do everything as well as we 
can by any expenditure of time. If it means that the time 
being a constant quantity, we should put our best energies into 
it, the proverb is a platitude. Of course we should do every- 
thing as well as we can in this sense. But a great many people 
do unimportant things too well, spend an amount of time over 
them which they don't deserve, and their life is shortened. It 
is well that there should be a kind of attraction for some people 
in routine work. I am never so happily employed as when I 
am doing what to many men would be drudgery e.g. the 
correction of German exercises (when I have made them my- 
self), but one is tempted to involve oneself in too much of 
work of this sort, and as I do it slowly, it becomes a terrible 



A retrospect 45 

shortening of one's days. What a strange frame of mind this 
is by which one deliberately turns oneself into a machine with- 
out thought or feeling ! " " 



A retrospect. 7 Feb. '74 

" ' Es mochte kein Hund so langer leben ! ' These words 
of Faust have not unfrequently come into my mind to express 
my feelings since I have been at Harrow. Having got what 
might seem a most enviable position I find too often that this 
is the outcome of it. Not that I am by any means unhappy, 
but there comes a feeling over me at times that either some 
other people or oneself ought to get some considerable benefit 
out of one's life and one can't find that any one does get much 
from it. The daily scramble with one's work prevents my ever 
doing anything for amusement. I occasionally take exercise 
for health and the exercise is pleasant enough, but I never 
take it except for health and rarely take enough even for 
health. ... If I felt I were teaching boys well or doing them 
any good, I don't think I should want Ehr > und Herrlichkeit 
der Welt or anything for myself. But I am profoundly dissatis- 
fied with the system of the Modern Side and I don't find my 
boys get on. The solitary thing in which I have the slightest 
success is in keeping order without punishment. . . . My boys 
and I are on a friendly footing, but our connection is not 
a strong one. I have to put up with so much bad work that 
I have got hardly to expect any good work. My feeling that I 
ought to do something better with the best years of my life led 
me to hint to B. that I should give up my berth here. 

" I never go anywhere, I never even play with a child. I 
have time for nothing but headaches. 

"What tremendous advantages the Roman Catholics have 
in some ways. They cannot become so entirely isolated. They 
belong to a body and a system, and the body and the system 
must often be wiser than the individual. Landes canentcs 



46 R. H. Quick 

martyris. We never sing the praises of a martyr. We some- 
how do not seem to have much in common with the martyrs. 
We are very aufgeklart no doubt and each of us has some 
connection with the universe. So has a limpet." 

Desideria. Oct. 10 '74 

" Last Thursday was Founder's Day. I was as usual weighed 
down with the feeling of want of leisure, for I have to preach 
on Sunday, and as usual my exercises are in arrears. I got the 
coil round me early in the Quarter and cannot get it off. But 
in spite of the feeling I went for a little while to the singing in 
Speech Room. As I looked down on the boys from the Gal- 
lery I had a dim consciousness how one might have been a 
force among them if I had not been always overwhelmed with 
exercises — if I had ever been fairly up with my work. But 
this consciousness of arrears has always dwarfed me and made 
me useless for any purpose. The state of the boys intellectu- 
ally seems to me to grow worse and worse. Their lessons do 
not touch their minds at all and every new voyage of discovery 
I make reveals some unexpected realm of darkness." 

Cribs 

In Nov. 1870 the authorisation of the use of cribs was a 
burning question and fly leaves were issued on either side. 
A masters' meeting was held to discuss the subject. Quick 
was neutral, inclining to the conservative side on the ground 
that it was a leap in the dark and that whatever the conse- 
quences might be it would be hardly possible to revoke the 
permission. He discusses a very clever letter of Mr Bowen 
in favour of their use. 

" If we don't allow cribs there is no satisfactory alternative, 
says Bowen. Cribs cannot be kept out by punishment, and if 
we appeal to a boy's honour we bring the Ark into the battle 
and run a great risk of losing it. He even says that a boy who 



Cribs 47 

breaks down under the temptation to use a crib has a grave 
charge to bring against the masters who invented the sin for 
him. But this is surely not a fair statement. If, as I believe, 
the study of foreign languages, especially ancient languages, 
loses much of its educational value when no attempt is made to 
gather an author's meaning from his words, it is incumbent on 
me to urge my pupils not to use cribs. When the offence is 
after all not in itself an immoral act and where there is no 
effectual means of preventing it, we should be wrong in treating 
with severity the few cases that come before us. But suppose 
we legalise cribs. Then no one will ever try to find out an 
author's meaning by himself. The boy will have to force the 
meaning into the words, instead of forcing it out of them. 
The connection between the words and the meaning is then not 
the living thing at all that it is when the student only knows the 
meaning from the words. And I very much doubt if the con- 
nection will be permanent in the student's mind. Bowen 
says that the length of lessons may by help of cribs be doubled 
or trebled, and then the student will come across every 
peculiarity so much more often. But here he and I join issue 
at once. I care rather about the clearness than the frequency 
of the impressions. At the pace he goes the boys can have 
hardly any clear impressions at all ; indeed he recognises this 
about the greater part of each lesson, for he only sets a single 
sentence for parsing. What is a boy the better for getting up 
some indifferent English and connecting it arbitrarily with a set 
of German words of which he knows next to nothing ! Of 
course the opposite or accurate method is not so easily carried 
out. Boys won't get up construing thoroughly, and if you set 
it a second time they won't prepare it at all. Moreover it is of 
no use expecting boys who know but little of a language to take 
a dictionary and dig out the meaning of a piece of German or 
Latin. I at present should go in for a beginner's book in 
which the machinery of the language was thoroughly worked in 
every way with as few words as possible. After that reading 



48 R. H. Quick 

books with vocabularies. . . ." Of the discussion he writes : — 
" The only point on which we all were agreed was in con- 
demning things as they are and in urging the necessity of some 
change. A small majority were for legalising the use of cribs, 
but of this majority few believed that languages should be 
taught in this way, only, as it was distinctly said by one or two, 
the results of the present system are so small that change 
could hardly do harm." 

Pupil Room, or Tutorial System at Harrow 

"At masters' meeting to-night the discussion on the Tutorial 
system opened with a speech from Dr Butler. Our present 
difficulty comes of having new wine in old bottles. When the 
Modern Side was started it was determined that every tutor 
should teach his pupils just what he liked as a private subject. 
Now all tutors except the composition masters are form-masters 
and almost all of them house-masters as well. So they have 
their time and attention pretty well taken up without any 
special work as tutors. Yet some forty boys of various ages 
and every shade of knowledge and capacity come to the tutor 
to be taught anything he likes. Most men feel that the thing 
becomes a mere sham, and many, or at least some, would 
abolish the tutorial system and make each man the tutor to the 
boys in his own house. Dr Butler however said that such a 
change as this was wholly out of the question. The great evil 
of public schools, he said, was treating boys too much in the 
mass. The tendency of the day was to get this corrected 
as much as possible. Hence parents lay stress on their boys 
having separate rooms, as at Eton. This individual treatment 
then must be secured by all possible means. Each boy should 
have a tutor who should make' a study of his character. But 
here comes in the obvious objection — why should a boy who 
is, say, one of eight boys in a mathematical or natural science 
master's house, need to have a study of his character made, 
not by the mathematical or natural science master, but by 



Pupil Room 49 

a classical master who has perhaps a large house of his own, 
and certainly some 39 other pupils? To this difficulty Butler 
addressed himself, but -quite unsuccessfully, as I thought. All 
he would say was that there must be an intellectual connection 
as well. Therefore he must go to a tutor who has something to 
do with his instruction. This is surely one of those subtleties 
which clever men invent and even believe in, or fancy they do, 
when they don't want to change what is established. Even 
this odd defence could not be set up for the tutorial system 
when applied to Modern boys. A boy is, say, with Bushell and 
is a Modern. He therefore learns no Classics to speak of, yet 
he has to go to a classical man who hardly pretends to teach 
him anything, in order that this classical man may make a study 
of his character. Butler admitted that tutors were over- 
worked, but he proposed that they should take their form 
work easier and set fewer exercises. The fear of boys being 
idle had he thought been pushed to an extreme. For 
preparation too he thought arrangements might be made for 
lightening work." 

The Lyon Foundation at Harrow 

"The Governors have come to the conclusion that most 
of the boys should not receive any pecuniary benefit from the 
property left by John Lyon ; so they propose that non- 
foundationers should pay a fixed sum for the use of buildings 
etc. But the masters worked themselves up into a highly 
protestant condition because the Chapel, the Vaughan Library 
and so on have been provided not by foundationers or their 
friends, but by foreigners and their friends. One man last 
night discovered that instead of non-foundationers paying for 
foundationers, it should in justice be the other way about, 
which meant, I suppose, that a certain number of residents 
of Harrow or of poor families throughout the country should 
be accorded the privilege of contributing to pay the expenses 

E 



50 R. H. Quick 

of the sons of the richest men in the country. The fact is the 
masters here consider simply that if the foundation money is 
spent in educating wholly or partly selected boys, they (the 
masters) will not be benefited, but if the money goes to general 
school expenses a good deal of it will come in the end to them. 
What are the facts? Here, and still more at Eton, there is 
considerable capital, the interest of which goes to the school. 
Some of this money was originally given for the benefit of the 
poor. Some was subscribed, as in the case of our recent 
building fund, with no such object, but simply for the sake of 
the school. Who then ought to benefit by this capital? Should 
any part go to the poor? If so, this could only be done by 
taking some part of the school revenues and applying them to 
the maintenance of other schools, whether primary or middle- 
class. Most men, however, would not fancy the alienation of 
funds for any purpose. 

"The great object of headmasters is to attract clever boys, 
and they would use all the endowments for the benefit of the 
clever. Butler, for instance, exerted himself tremendously to 
get money at the Tercentenary because he thinks that in the 
future money will purchase brains, and that if Harrow is 
poorly endowed, Winchester, Eton, etc., will draw off all our 
intellect." 

From this and other passages in the diary I gather that 
Quick held that endowments should be wholly employed in 
diminishing or cancelling the school fees for the children of 
needy parents. He held that any part of such funds as was 
expended on general school expenses would ultimately benefit, 
not the pupils or parents, but the masters. Parents of Eton 
or Harrow boys are generally well to do and expect to pay a 
good deal; at any rate they are not fitting objects of charity. 
With a poorly endowed school like Harrow the point at issue 
had rather a speculative than a practical interest, but at richly 
endowed schools like Eton and Winchester it has since become 
a burning question. 



Public School Discipline 51 

Monitorial system 

" The question of public school discipline has been for the 
last fortnight discussed pretty freely in the papers a propos 
of the Winchester tunding case. 

"The history of the monitorial system seems somewhat 
obscure. There is nothing of the kind at Eton. Perhaps it is 
a Wykehamist institution and was carried by Arnold to Rugby 
and thence by Vaughan here. 

" Dr Butler told me that he had found from papers of his 
father that in 1808 the monitors had ' whopped ' a boy and 
that the headmaster, Dr Butler, had announced that they had 
no such power and never should have while he was headmaster. 
The monitors resisted this at first but afterwards came to the 
Doctor and caved in. This, however, was not the end. They 
were chaffed about their submission and a rebellion began 
which led to the expulsion of eight boys. In Wordsworth's 
time the monitors used to whop and ' toe,' but whopping was 
not legalised. Dr Vaughan when he came wanted them to 
accept responsibility and to punish for school offences. This 
they positively declined to do. I suppose Vaughan got his 
way by degrees. Dr Butler lately asked the head of the school 
what he considered to be the limit of cuts with the cane which 
might be inflicted. He said 15, though it never reached this 
number in practice. Dr Butler said 10 must be the limit." 

Harrow in Wordsworth 's time 

" The government of the school in Wordsworth's time was 
a limited anarchy. Boys used to do pretty much what they 
liked. They cut ' bill,' getting other boys to answer for them 
and went up to town for the great cricket matches. They got 
out at nights and played Will o' the wisp, i.e. they chased a boy 
carrying a lantern. They played cricket, smokers against non- 
smokers, the smokers smoking all the time. Wordsworth never 
looked up from his book during school, so that all kinds of 



52 R. H. Quick 

things went on in the 6th form in school, even card-playing. 
Roimdell remembers a boy filling his mouth with bits of paper 
and spitting them out as if he were sick. Wordsworth only 
told him to quote something to reprove his own folly, on which 
the boy quoted coolly Dulce est desiperein loco. The boys used 
to go off with Billy Warner fishing for the day. Shooting too was 
not uncommon. On one occasion, directly after 2 o'clock bill, 
Currer and another set off with a gun, the one carrying the 
stock and the other the barrel. Wordsworth came riding up 
and reproved one of them for being in a shooting jacket, but he 
never saw the gun. At the dame's house (the old Vicarage) a 
monitor was much disliked by the boys. The boys accordingly 
asked leave of some other monitors and with their permission 
gave him a tremendous kicking." 

Time spent in looking over exercises 

"Yesterday I was talking to J. A. Cruikshank and got him 
to add up the time he spends weekly in correcting exercises 
and he found it to be between 16 and 18 hours a week. Now 
this is surely a great blunder. It is not only a man's time 
that is lost in this way, but his energy and animal spirits and 
freshness are knocked out of him too. If he does all this 
looking over work he can't be thoroughly fit for his other work. 
F. E. Marshall says he looks over about the same amount and 
has a greater amount of teaching too. Every hour in school is 
supposed to mean that a boy does an hour's written exercise 
out, and this F. looks over and marks though he doesn't in 
most cases give it back. Of course he dashes it off fast or he 
never could get through the amount. All this looking over 
comes from boys being so little in school. They must be 
employed out of school especially in the evenings and so 
these exercises are set. There is of course a great risk, in 
some cases a certainty of their getting their work done for 
them. Some masters say they wish boys to work together, 
and when boys doing the same work are together without the 



Out of school work 53 

presence of a master it is not in human nature that they should 
work quite independently. I say they should have more time 
with their form masters. G. H. Hallam says this would be 
very bad : that the chief thing is for boys to learn how to 
work by themselves and that they are not thrown enough on 
their own resources, as it is. I don't see myself what would 
be the right thing, and can't find anyone who talks sense about 
it. If much written work is done, either the masters get slack 
in revising it and the boys get to go slap-dash at everything 
and do it anyhow (there is a great deal of this sort of work 
here) or else the master gets all his energy taken out of him 
by correction of exercises. I myself am not a good specimen, 
as I bungle over the job so, but I give and have given so 
much time to it that I have never been able to study individual 
boys as I could wish. One ought to have very definite im- 
pressions about the boys one teaches and one might learn a 
great deal about them if one was on the look-out. The whist 
books estimate all a player can find out about the hands of 
the other players from observing the cards that fall. If anyone 
were sharp enough to do this always he would seem to the 
uninitiated a conjuror. In the same way we might learn an 
astonishing amount about our boys if we knew what to look 
for and were always on the look-out. Cf. Coningsby, cap. in. 
ad fin. on men's ignorance of boys' minds." 

Masters' Meeting. Exercise books 

"Last night (Nov. 5, 1874) we had a Masters' Meeting of 
more importance than usual, for at it the school bill was cut 
down from five minutes to two. There was a discussion about 
Arnold's Exercises a propos of a scheme of Rivington's. These 
discussions do not impress one favourably with the wisdom of 
schoolmasters, or rather with their professional knowledge. 
The talk amounted just to this, that some people thought 
Arnold's books good, and some thought them bad, that 
some masters used them, and some didn't, but nobody knew 



54 R. H. Qiiick 

anything of the practice of the other forms. The only thing like 
a divergence on principle was that some men held that exercise 
books were bad things altogether, and that connected pieces of 
prose should be set, while others maintained that without 
text-books teaching gets desultory; but nobody had anything 
to judge from except the practice which he himself had 
happened to adopt." 

Neatness 

" A school inspector has said that neatness in a school is 
capable of any amount of cultivation. Most people seem to 
think it an idiosyncrasy, and to some extent it is, but by 
comparing school with school it will be found that in the 
matter of neatness the influence of the master shows itself 
more conspicuously than in anything else. And neatness is 
of immense value and every boy should be trained to it. 
Here however, and I suppose in most public schools, neatness 
seems entirely neglected. Several things help to produce this 
neglect. The masters have too much to do and too many 
boys to attend to, to take thought for it. Then a boy is not 
more than 13 or at most 26 weeks with a master, and as there 
is no agreement on such points, if an individual master were to 
worry himself about the neatness of the work, he would just 
when he was licking a boy into shape lose him and get another 
to begin again with. Moreover he would know that any neat- 
ness a boy had learnt with him would be lost again in the form 
above. Besides, some men require such large quantities to be 
written that scribbling must be the result. One of the French 
masters requires each boy to bring a written translation of all 
the construing, which translation is never corrected. Then too 
there is much writing for punishment. The house tutors should 
do something in the matter, but they have too much to do and 
must scramble along anyhow. The consequences seem to me 
deplorable." 



Confirmation 5 5 



Confirmation 

" I have lately been seeing some boys for confirmation. I 
wish I felt ' drawn towards them,' but though I really desire 
to benefit them I feel little confidence in my power of doing 
it. I should doubt if X. is very successful. Having himself a 
marvellous power of expression, he overestimates the power in 
boys. He gives them questions to answer — some of them 
very difficult ones, as to expose the fallacy in the lines : — 

' For forms and creeds let senseless bigots fight ; 
He can't be wrong whose life is in the right.' 

On such topics boys have no thoughts : they will reproduce 
anything they are told, and if they are sharp boys the thought 
may look like their own, but it isn't really. When the boys 
are dull the effort at reproduction leads to unfortunate results. 
E. M. Young set as a question, ' Give instances of the ways in 
which God is our father.' One boy said, ' He was made in our 
image,' and when Young pointed out that the answer would not 
do, the boy gravely asserted, ' That's what you said.' 

" What I have endeavoured to do is to put before boys as 
simply as possible some of the truths which seem to me to 
have the most practical value in life. These are conveyed by 
such words as, ' Seek ye first the kingdom of God.' ' Watch.' 
' It is more blessed to give than to receive.' ' He that will be 
great among you, let him be your servant.' The parable of 
the Talents. The figure of the Vine. If one could get only 
one of these great principles of life received into a boy's mind, 
and get him to try to apply it, this would affect him in every- 
thing. But it is so difficult to feel the truths one is uttering, 
and unless one feels them there is little chance of one's hearers 
feeling them. The intellectual act goes for very little in such 
matters, and yet this is all one seems capable of." 



56 R. H. Quick 



A Public School Incident 

" Here is a story of ' how not to do it ' in managing a public 
school. X. is a slippery customer whom the headmaster 
decides on sending away. The boy's guardian intercedes, the 
headmaster gives way and says if the boy is taken home till 
the end of the half he may reappear and the headmaster will 
' take leave ' of him. The boy is told this and says, ' All 
right, the headmaster has promised to take leave of me. I'm 
not sent and shan't go,' and stays accordingly. The head- 
master tells him the next offence will be his last. This 
happens in the form of cutting a school soon after. Verses 
were collected at this school and the praepostor being in league 
with the absentee asserted that he had been at school : but in 
that case where were the verses ? X. gets a boy in the house 
of his form master to steal a copy of verses out of the same 
set and these together with X.'s verses are put in the form 
master's waste-paper basket. X. tries to get the form master 
to search for these verses, but the form master is wary and won't. 
He then gets his tutor to go to the form master and ask to see 
the sets of verses and count them. Two sets are found wanting, 
so the tutor urges that X.'s have been lost with another set. 
Still the form master refuses to withdraw the charge of absence, 
and X. gets six boys to come forward and say that he was in 
school. The headmaster then says the charge against him 
has broken down and X. goes about bragging how he has 
'done' the headmaster." 

Teachers unimprovable 

" In our hopes of general improvement we fluctuate through 
a large angle. At first we expect to find everyone bent 
on self-improvement ; but in the end it forces itself upon 
us that everyone hates the notion of improvement. To take 
a trifling instance. When I went to Harrow in 1870 I found 



Conservatism of Schools 57 

that though there were nearly 600 boys in the school, there 
was no way of finding out easily what house or form or pupil- 
room a boy belonged to. I therefore proposed the publication 
of an alphabetical list. Most men declared it would be quite 
useless, and if I had only recommended I might have gone on 
recommending till now. But I made a list and printed it, and 
now the plan has been adopted with little change by Rugby, 
Marlborough, Haileybury and Cranleigh. As for John Smith 
he declares the ' blue book ' of the greatest daily use to him. 
. . . Not only do the taught suffer from this humdrum routinism ; 
the teachers suffer at least as much. Nothing gives more 
pleasure than the sense that one is improving. ' How dull it 
is to pause, to make an end ' of all effort to do better and to 
go on day after day living the ' unexamined life ' which it is 
not good to live ! Directly the hope of improvement goes, 
life loses one of its main interests. To me school work has 
never been dull or monotonous, because I have always felt 
that it might be well done, and that though I was not doing 
it as it should be done, I was improving. Books about teach- 
ing have always been welcome to me because they took my 
life up into a clearer and brighter atmosphere where one could 
examine it properly. These books gave me a notion of the 
possibilities of my calling. Besides it is pleasant to compare 
one's own experiences with those of other people and see 
whether others have met with the same difficulties, and if so 
how they have got over them. But it seems our English 
teachers absolutely refuse to look at books about their work. 
Each man prefers to strike out his own methods or to go on in 
those of his own school-days and doesn't want to know about 
other people's. Laurie has started a lending library for 
teachers, and in the first year about six people availed them- 
selves of it. Dr Donaldson published a valuable volume of 
lectures, and lost a lot of money over it. Nobody wants such 
wares. Even a readable and popular book like D'Arcy 
Thompson's Day- Dreams is not in demand. The first edition 



58 R. H. Quick 

is now sold out and the publishers will not risk a new one. 
If a book were published showing how teachers could add 
5 per cent, to their incomes, the whole profession would read 
it as one man, but if a book only shows the teacher how he 
may work with more interest and pleasure to himself and 
more profit to his pupils, nobody cares to look at it. The 
natural consequence of the teachers' carelessness is that they 
adopt the ordinary school books and use them constantly 
whether they are good or bad. So there is no demand for 
good books, no objection to bad. If a book has anyhow got 
into use it goes on and prospers like MorelPs Grammar." 

Autobiography 

" Generally speaking I infer that what I write is from some 
cause or other by no means treffend. Yet an odd thing has 
just happened about an article I wrote at Robertson's sugges- 
tion for the Daily News on Literature in Primary Schools. 
The article referred to a letter which was to appear on the 
same day. In a week or so the letter came out, but not the 
leader. I therefore sent the article somewhat altered to the 
Monthly Journal. Some weeks after it had appeared there it 
came out in the Daily News. Finally I take up the Scholastic 
Advertiser, June i, and find in it my Daily News article, now 
some months old, given verbatim as an original article. The 
only change is that ' a correspondent in our columns ' becomes 
' a correspondent in a contemporary.' " 

Autobiography. Estimate of his own style. A letter sent 
to the ' Times ' not having been inserted 

" Nobody ever says what he really thinks of himself even to 
his most intimate friend ; he always takes off a large discount 
before he says anything in his own favour. But I don't know 
why one should be shy in writing for one's own future infor- 
mation ; so without discount I may say that I think my letters 



Leaving Harrozv 59 

fairly clear, sensible, and to the point. They are always very 
carefully and (as I think) correctly worded, and I should say 
they never are wordy. On the other hand I am quite aware 
that there is no flow about them, nothing to carry the reader 
along or excite him in any way. Of course my writing is 
totally without the charm one finds in J. H. Newman &c, and 
I have none of the attractiveness that some people find in 
diffuse writers such as A. K. H. B. and MoncriefT. It hangs 
fire and is never more than sensible. I much regret that I have 
let routine work so consume my time and energies that since I 
was very young I have not studied good English prose writers 
as I should have done. Charm is a matter of genius, but one 
may catch something of the excellence of the writers with 
whom one is familiar. When I wrote the Educational Reformer 
Essays I had sometimes great difficulty in expressing myself. 
Since then I have scribbled so much either for the Journal of 
Education or in these books that I am not now often at a loss 
for words that will form a tolerable sentence ; but the sentence 
is apt to be a flat one." 

At the end of the Midsummer Term 1874, Quick resigned 
the mastership at Harrow which he had held for not quite four 
years. The proximate cause of his retirement was ill health. 
Headaches increased in frequency, and he grew more and more 
oppressed with the daily drudgery of exercises and school 
routine, and the sense of accumulating arrears which he was 
unable to overtake. Fortunately he had not to take into con- 
sideration the bread-and-butter question, but it is not every 
man who would have thrown up a certain competence and the 
prospect of comparative affluence without any external press- 
ure, and solely because he felt himself temporarily unable to 
fulfil to his own satisfaction all the duties that fell to his share. 
The ordinary course in such a case is to ask for some alleviation 
of work, or to engage a substitute and try the effect of a pro- 
longed holiday. This w T as not Quick's way. To money-making 
he was absolutely indifferent, and with his innate modesty he 



60 R. H. Qtiick 

settled that his place would easily be filled by others intellectu- 
ally his equals and physically stronger and more competent. 
Yet it was not without a wrench that he quitted a place where 
he had made some of his closest friendships, and which to the 
end of his life he regarded with heartfelt affection. His deci- 
sion was undoubtedly a wise one, and his Harrow friends and 
colleagues might have applied to him Juvenal's farewell greeting, 

' Ouamvis digressu veteris turbatus amici, 
Laudo tamen.' 1 

His parts were too solid, and he lacked the versatility and 
nimbleness of wit that are needed for a successful public school- 
master. He had not a free hand to apply the pedagogic 
axioms which had been borne in on him by study and reflec- 
tion, still less was he at liberty to try those experiments in 
teaching which were constantly suggesting themselves to a 
mind which was by nature both critical and sanguine. 

It is a favourite argument with educational obscurantists to 
point to the failure or very moderate success of the educational 
reformers in the practical work of schoolmastering. They point 
to Mulcaster, compelled to resign his headmastership of Mer- 
chant Taylors' School ; to Milton, whose private venture school 
at Aldgate was reduced to the vanishing point of two nephews ; 
to Pestalozzi, whose Institute at Yverdun became a bear- 
garden ; to more modern instances, which it would be invidious 
to specify ; and they think that they have hoist the engineer 
with his own petard and proved the superiority of the wisdom 
of the ancients to new-fangled notions, of practical common- 
sense to theoretic speculation. Let us for the sake of argument 
admit the premise, the conclusion by no means follows. All 
Art must ultimately rest on theory, but the great theorist is not 
necessarily a great artist. Because inventors rarely succeed in 
making their own fortunes, it does not prove that their inven- 
tions are naught. When Browning asks, ' What porridge had 
John Keats?' he does not intend to question Keats's claim to 



A Harrow Colleague 61 

rank as a poet, or to imply that Noakes and Stokes would have 
written equally good poetry had Keats never lived. The ex- 
plorer is more likely to' come to grief than the plodder who 
keeps to the beaten track, but it is only ' the saucy Thracian 
wench ' that makes fun of the star-gazing philosopher who falls 
into a well. 

Quick was not a teacher to the manner born as were his 
contemporaries Dr Kennedy, Dean Bradley, Professor Bonamy 
Price, but he had faith in his high calling and profession which 
few of his generation shared, and by help of that faith ' out of 
weakness he was made strong.' Painfully conscious of his own 
shortcomings, recording and analysing them in the hope that 
they might serve as stepping-stones to future generations of 
teachers, too clear-sighted to be imposed upon by convention- 
alities, too sanguine of the possible attainments of training and 
culture to acquiesce in the traditional routine and respectable 
conservatism of English public schools, and too honest and 
fearless to conceal his discontent, he was naturally no prophet 
in his own country, but he has won a lasting place among 
" Educational reformers," and can safely appeal to the verdict 
of posterity from the half-patronizing, half-contemptuous esti- 
mate of his practical colleagues, who regarded him as an ami- 
able but ineffectual dreamer. 

The impression that he left on his Harrow colleages is 
faithfully rendered in the obituary notice of his colleague and 
commensalis Mr G. H. Hallam, and the Recollections written 
at my request by his headmaster for the Joimial of Education. 
The few personal traits so delicately and feelingly rendered by 
Dr Butler, though not immediately connected with school life, 
will not be deemed inapposite : — 

You have asked me to send you a few words in memory of Mr 
R. H. Quick. To criticise so old and so dear a friend is quite be- 
yond me. It will be enough if I can say two or three things that 
may help to bring back his image to the many friends who loved him. 

He joined us at Harrow, as a Master, at my request, soon after 



62 R. H. Quick 

we began our "Modern Side. 11 His special work was to teach 
German, which he had mastered thoroughly abroad, but it was by 
no means limited to this. His knowledge of Mathematics and his 
love for English Literature were all turned to account. 

I never myself heard him give a lesson, and I am not certain 
that he was specially made to be a great teacher in a large school, 
but he was beyond doubt an invaluable companion of other teachers. 
His affectionate brotherly ways, his instinctive sympathy, his readi- 
ness to receive as well as to give help, his sturdy common sense, 
his "many-twinkling smile 11 of humour, his quiet enjoyment of 
being quizzed by friends who, he knew, loved and respected him — 
these human gifts, added to the fact that he was one of the very 
few men who had made a scientific study of the history and princi- 
ples of education abroad and at home, gave to his companionship 
at School a unique worth. 

Pedantry in some form is, I suppose — anyhow our friends 
suppose it for us — "the badge of all our tribe. 11 Pedantry and 
Quick had no point of contact. Anything pedantic was out of 
place, and, we may hope, out of countenance, in his presence. 
Exaggeration of boyish faults, undue brooding over passing fric- 
tions between attached colleagues, the vultus compositus of offended 
dignity, extreme consistency for consistency^ sake — alike by his 
instincts and his studies he had got behind and beyond all those 
north winds of school life. And then he was so genial and so 
brotherly that his colleagues, who gladly admitted him to their 
confidence, could not but be wrought upon and " dulcified " by 
his cheery kindly judgments. 

A word should be said about his sermons in the School Chapel. 
They were in many ways sui generis. I always looked forward to 
them, and always enjoyed them. They hardly ever lasted a quarter 
of an hour. He used to declare that he could not find matter for 
so protracted an ordeal ; yet his mind, far from being meagre or 
barren, was running over with theories, and protests, and fresh 
views of life, and most genuine affection. But to put such thoughts 
and such feelings into shape was a labour which he unfeignedly 
dreaded. Once written, the sermons were well worth hearing. 
They were the talk of a kindly elder brother, by no means pre- 
suming on his primogeniture, speaking seriously, but perhaps a 
little too diffidently, to young people whom he greatly liked and 



A Harrow Colleague 63 

thoroughly believed in. They were delivered with a sort of confi- 
dential nod of the head, and a little pause after each telling sen- 
tence, as much as to deprecate any undue value for the preacher's 
opinion : " You surely won't believe that, simply because / tell it 
you." This is not, I believe, the traditional eloquence of great 
preachers, but it was eloquence in its way — the outcome of great 
humbleness and transparent simplicity. One of his sermons spe- 
cially comes back to me, characteristic alike in tone and matter. 
It was on the difference between Godliness and Religiousness. 
Those who knew our dear friend will easily guess to which of the 
two characters he gave the palm, and perhaps can almost see him 
jerking out the short crisp paragraphs in which they were severally 
commended or dispraised. 

His sermons did not show anything like the full intellectual 
power of the man — his wide study, his independent thought, his 
ripe wisdom — but they showed much that was most winning and 
delightful in him, his piety, his kindliness, and, as I have implied 
above, his quite exceptional simplicity. It was this simplicity and 
benevolence which made him such a hero with children. With 
them he was seen at his best. There must be not a few young 
people now living between 20 and 30, in different parts of the 
world, whose memories of nursery life will go back gratefully to his 
magical visits. Whatever he may have been in School, in Council, 
in the Pulpit, in his books, in travelling, in Switzerland, at Co- 
blentz, at Heidelberg — and every one of these words will call up affec- 
tionate recollections to some at least of his friends — there was one 
region of the earth in which he reigned supreme, and that was the 
nursery floor or the drawing-room rug. There, rolling about with 
a whole swarm of happy children buzzing and settling upon him, 
and taking most unpedantic liberties with his long and long-suffering 
beard, he looked the very genius of good-nature. In truth he 
dearly loved young children. They were present to him as he 
wrote his books, as he preached his sermons, as he chatted on 
Education with his friends and colleagues. They coloured his 
personal religion, and inspired his professional efforts after educa- 
tional reforms. Firmly believing in their intuitions, their poetry, 
and the preciousness of their fresh immaturity, he could not bear 
that they should be " offended " by rigid systems of training which 
seemed to him to force and cramp and materialise, under the guise 



64 R. H. Quick 

and in the names of discipline or uniformity or competition. Had 
he ever needed, as some good men reluctantly need, a volume of 
personal testimonials, many pages should have been left vacant for 
their inarticulate but emphatic commendations. 

Some years ago I remember receiving a letter from Archbishop 
Tait, who was thinking of offering him some small living. I sent 
the good Archbishop an official testimonial, but I added another of 
a different kind, which was not intended to be filed and pigeon- 
holed in the archives of Lambeth. 

It told how two young children at Harrow, a brother and sister, 
not very far back in this century, had caught a live mouse in a 
trap. What should they do with it ? Servants, kindly but conven- 
tional, wished to drown their hereditary enemy. "Not to be 
thought of, 11 said the children. Might they turn him loose in the 
garden ? " Not to be thought of," said the gardener. 

Thus baffled by the uninventiveness of their natural leaders, the 
young philosophers had to fall back on first principles. "Who was 
the kindest man in Harrow ? " Kind friends in Harrow were never 
few, but the premiership was not doubtful. They plumped for Mr 
Quick, and marched straight to his house, meaning to commend 
the poor trembling mouse- to his care; but finding the kindest of 
men out, they let loose the little prisoner in his drawing-room, and 
came back gleefully down the hill, swinging the empty trap, nowise 
doubting that the educational future of this " waif and stray " was 
abundantly secured. Could the good Vicar of Wakefield himself 
have desired a more eloquent testimonial ? 

You, Sir, may perhaps think that such a story is hardly fitted 
for an august Journal of Education, but you will know that it is at 
least characteristic of the friend whom we have lost. He would 
have shaken his head over it, more suo, but not in disapproval, much 
less in contempt. 

For myself, I shall never read his writings, or stand beside his 
grave, or think of those whom he has left behind, without a grateful 
memory of this little incident of happy bygone days, days which 
owed not a little of their happiness to his unfailing loyalty and 
affection. 



Marriage 65 



Clearing the decks 

" I have spent to-day in turning over books and papers and 
condemning large quantities, but things wachsen Tiber den Kopf. 
And yet I hate confusion, and when I am well I struggle hard 
against it. But I am always looking forward to the time when 
I shall be able to study this or that, and I accumulate materials, 
as David did for the building of the Temple, though in fact 
there is little chance of my ever using it myself or finding a 
Solomon. 

" Vivre de pen was Cobbett's maxim ; ' Live with little ' 
would be mine. Everything one owns turns up at some time or 
other and demands a billet, and one becomes a mere quarter- 
master-general to one's own property. Sometimes in an evil hour 
one subscribes to a periodical or a book that comes out in num- 
bers or to a society that keeps sending one its publications. These 
things keep coming and coming till they almost oust one from 
one's own rooms. By degrees one gets to hate the sight of 
them, and I now often ' go for ' one of them when it appears 
and fling it into the waste-paper basket as eagerly as one 
crushes a wasp. This last simile, by the way, is not strong 
enough. I know perfectly well that a wasp will make its way 
out again if I take no notice of it, so ich lass' sie gewahren, but 
a paper will never take itself off (unless one happens to want 
it) , but will obtrude itself again and again till one is driven wild 
by its pert ' Now then, where am I to go ? ' " 

His notion on leaving Harrow was to start a preparatory 
school. Fondness for children was one of the most marked 
traits of his character, and he was keen to try his own methods 
of teaching without let or hindrance. He hoped too in this 
way to get again some leisure for reading and writing, the loss 
of which was the main crook in his lot at Harrow. He was 
however in no hurry to put himself into harness again, and two 
years elapsed before his plan was carried out. 

In this interval occurred what he describes as the grand 

F 



66 R. H. Qttick 

climacteric of his life, his marriage with Bertha, daughter of 
General Parr and sister of Lieutenant Parr, of Arctic celebrity. 
On all other subjects the Diaries are a Journal intime.. As to 
his loves and hates, his aspirations and failures, his religious 
beliefs and doubts, there is no reserve or reticence, but to his 
married life there is hardly an allusion. It would be presumpt- 
uous for an editor to attempt to fill in this gap ; but for the 
sake of those readers who know nothing of Quick personally, it 
may be well to state that he found in his wife a perfect help- 
mate, that no cloud ever ruffled the serenity of his wedded 
happiness, and that his silence is indicative of feelings too 
intense and sacred for utterance. The Note-books contain 
but one reference to his engagement, and that by way of covert 
allusion. 

" The great division of my life comes between the last entry 
and this. ' Gefiihl ist alles ' wrote Goethe. This seems the 
literal truth at some seasons, and our ordinary life is no doubt 
so mean because it is so unfeeling. We see 

* The inanimate cold world allowed 
To the poor loveless ever-anxious crowd.' 

" In my late experience I have observed how the mind when 
touched by feeling naturally has recourse to known forms of 
expression. Hence the value and comfort of good hymns, 
good not perhaps from a literary point of view, but good as 
expressing genuine feeling. 

" The remarkable thing about the emotionless life is that its 
condition seems so stationary. One allows one's self to be 
buried beneath a heap of routine, one gets no glimpses of the 
universe around and above one ; one's interests are all of the 
pettiest kind, and in this state one goes on with no perceptible 
change. A loss comes and one's usual habits of thought and 
one's usual interests are broken in upon. The fountains of the 
deep are stirred. One gets a consciousness of Beatus quiin- 
telligit (Ps. xli. i). 



Orme Square 67 

" April, '76. — General Parr 's Bickley. After all, reading and 
writing do not seem the Kernbeschaftigungen of our lives. I 
hav'nt made a note in this book since the most important date 
in my life the 3rd of Feb. last [his wedding-day]. How little 
we see of life at a time ! Our view is dioramic and we can 
hardly remember what we just before saw so distinctly." 

In the summer of 1876 he purchased the good-will of a 
small preparatory school which had been started a few years 
previously in Orme Square, Bayswater, by Mr Meiklejohn, 
afterwards Professor of Education in the University of St 
Andrews. The numbers had never been above twenty, and 
during the four years that Quick carried on the school they 
never grew but rather showed a tendency to decrease. Sur- 
prising as this ill success may seem with a man of such special 
qualifications, the explanation is simple. Quick was utterly 
deficient in the art of e push.' So far from advertising himself 
he seemed partly from over-scrupulousness, partly from innate 
modesty, to take a perverse pleasure in depreciating his wares. 
To a parent who came with a sickly child, he would point out 
the unsuitableness of London air for delicate constitutions. If 
a clever boy outshot his fellows, he would advise his removal to 
a larger school where he would find the stimulus of competition ; 
if a boy proved dull or lazy, he would suggest trying the effect 
of a fresh start elsewhere. Of this reason of failure he was 
himself only half aware, and was often inclined to set it down 
to his own incapacity. In a moment of depression he writes — 
"16 June, '77. Numbers at lecture small, numbers in school 
ditto. Ready to throw everything up. When a man does 
not believe in himself, he must not expect other people to 
believe in him." 

" 11, Orme Square, 3 Nov. '76. — I have now been in this 
house six weeks to-morrow and shall have finished my first six 
weeks of a day-school. I have already found the usual diffi- 
culties as to manner. One begins with a cheerful kindly 
manner and liking one's boys extremely. By degrees one loses 



68 R. H. Quick 

this manner and the boys seem to lose some of their charm. 
Then comes the official manner, the chief object of which is 
repression. In some ways my boys are quite as good as I 
expected, better even. They are very bright and keen on their 
work. Their minds seem acute and active with a vengeance. 
The chief difficulty is to keep them to the matter in hand. If 
one allows questions, the boys will ask first something con- 
nected with the subject, then something connected with that, 
and so on ad infinitum." 

Leisure, Study, Interest 

" One of the untruest things I know is Bacon's assertion that 
we are sure to find time for what we like. I do intensely like 
study, and yet I hardly ever open a book. The reason is that 
I cannot escape from the regular English (and Greek?) notion 
that study is leisure. So I go on through the desert of trivial 
employments, always hoping that an oasis will show itself soon, 
but it never does. When I have been totally free from other 
employments I have studied with some vigour and intense 
pleasure. At Westbourne I ground at Justin Martyr and Ter- 
tullian, and during the time I was at work on my Essays I 
worked steadily for ten hours a day. And yet I now get into 
the whirr of small occupations and never find time for reading 
or thought. This evening I have read with delight the Essay 
on the Education of a Prince among some Port Royal Essays, 
translated by a person of quality. In reading a good book one 
feels surprised at the intellectual life which is suddenly revealed 
to us. There has been little in my notes lately, for I never 
think. ... I have remarked somewhere in my notes that 
the mind gets accustomed to difficulties of long standing 
and finds some modus vivendi with them. At first a difficulty 
strikes one, say a religious difficulty, and makes one very un- 
easy. It seems altogether destructive of much in our belief 
which is essential to us. But we go on for a year or two and 
the difficulty does not distress us, and yet we have given up 



Leistire, study, interest 69 

nothing for it, and have found no solution for it. I observe 
too, that our interests grow cold like our difficulties. A year 
ago I was intensely keen -on getting lending libraries introduced 
into primary schools, and I wondered that other educationists 
did not see the importance of this as I did, or at least did not 
take the same interest in the matter. I have now changed 
from my standpoint to theirs. I am as convinced as ever of 
the importance of the libraries, but somehow I don't seem to 
care much more about them than if somebody else were urging 
them upon me. What is this interest and what does it depend 
upon ? What invites it, and why is it always in danger of dying 

away? " 

Qui trop e7iibrasse. . . . 

" 17. 8. '77. — Now I have settled here quietly with Bertha 
I have been looking at books, &c, and the conclusion I. have 
come to is, that I have material for Educational writing which 
I could not manipulate without an additional life or two. The 
danger now is lest I should be crushed by my material and never 
do anything. Even in writing my .Essays, I found at times 
that I must stick to one authority if I wanted to get anything 
finished, and this seems to have been the experience of much 
abler writers. Macaulay might be supposed to have had bound- 
less material and unequalled power in dealing with it, and yet 
when I read Johnson's Addison, I found that it virtually con- 
tained the material of Macaulay's great Essay. So now I must 
cultivate the art of neglecting instead of amassing, and in read- 
ing must confine myself to what is really great, either in thought 
or expression. For writing this should afford sufficient stoff 
combined with what I think myself. One's own thoughts have 
a freshness which makes them palatable to others, and so one's 
indifferent mutton having been cooked only once may be pre- 
ferred to venison that has been served up again and again in 
different forms, till it has become tasteless. How strange it is 
that one is so long in learning the importance of great books 
and the necessity of neglecting middling ones." 



yo R. H. Quick 

Thoughts o?i the New Year 

" i Jan. 1878. Marine Parade, Brighton, 6 a.m. When 
one thinks of the immensity of time and of the Christian 
hope that there is endless existence before us, one is perplexed 
that this infinity of time should take its character from a 
few years that seem to bear no proportion to it. One observes, 
however, that in the time here by far the greatest portion 
is determined by certain hours or it may be minutes. 

4 In itself a thought, 
A slumbering thought, is capable of years — ' 

says Byron, and certain it is that all our lives are under the 
influence of moments when fresh convictions dawned on us, or 
when we made some important resolution, or when we passed 
through some special trial. With most of us the greater part 
of our life seems merely wasted. We eat, drink, and sleep, join 
in meaningless chit-chat, pay calls and the like. Others get 
through an immense amount of work ; but at times we have 
glimpses which show us that life consists neither in chit-chat 
nor in work, and that even the latter needs something in it, 
but not of it, before it can be good for anything ' in the king- 
dom of heaven.' Perhaps the scanty moments we give to 
prayer may in importance be the chief part of our existence. 

"June 26, 1878. I have now been a schoolmaster for 
twenty years off and on, and I seriously doubt whether I have 
learnt my alphabet as a teacher. I set off with an admirable 
principle which I had learnt from my own teacher, L., at Cam- 
bridge. L. used to expound away and expound away, and 
thought that what was clear to his own mind must in the end 
become clear to mine. But he never investigated how my 
mind was working, what I had taken in, when I was at fault, 
&c. ; so I listened to his explanations, broke down at some 
point near the beginning, and let him go on by himself. I 
wished I could follow, but could not. I asked him this and 



Thoughts on teaching 71 

that ; he went off again, and in the end I was obliged to say ? 
1 Yes, yes, all right,' in order to get rid of the whole concern. 
From this experience I decided that the teacher ought not to 
think of the image in his mind, but of the image in the mind 
of his pupil. I have made this the test of my preaching, but 
alas not of my practice. I have always had to do with boys in 
numbers, and have always been in a muddle, with arrears of 
uncorrected exercises, &c, so that I have never felt at leisure 
to take note of the mental condition or mental operations of 
particular pupils. Here at Orme Square, with a few pupils I 
have had a fair opportunity, but my habits have been so 
formed by past teaching that I have gone on pretty much 
in the rough as before. I have set lessons and hardly ob- 
served how far they have been carefully learnt. Certainly I 
have never investigated how the boys' minds have worked 
upon them. My most successful lesson has been in mental 
arithmetic. In this I have asked no end of questions of the 
same kind and let the boys invent their own methods of 
solving them. I have once or twice enquired and found the 
greatest variety of ways adopted. But as some of these ways 
were certainly better than others, I ought to have pointed 
out the better ways. I have asked them about their way of 
learning poetry, but have given little help towards the right 
way. I find they mostly learn it as mere sounds, often a line 
at a time. And throughout I have gone on the most happy- 
go-lucky method, not doing more than examining results and 
grumbling at them. Lake 1 opened my eyes very much by 
the questions he put to some of my boys : — Where do you 
find difficulty? Can't you think of the sense of the piece, or 

of the words, or of what? At present one is content 

with setting work and blowing up if the boy fails. It's very 
easy to do this, and perhaps masters of public schools with a 
stream of boys passing through their forms, some thirty or more 

1 A private schoolmaster of marked originality, the founder of the 
Education Society, which was merged in the Teachers' Guild. 



72 R. H. Quick 

at a time, and their pupil-room of some thirty more boys, can't 
do anything else. But with a small number like mine one 
might try to find out what a boy's strength and what his 
weakness is, how he tackles a thing, and how he is balked 
in his efforts, whether he scamps his work or does his best at 
it, what knowledge he already has and how he brings his old 
knowledge to bear on a new task. A man endeavouring to 
understand his pupils in this way would not think of his office 
as a driver thinks of his, and suppose that his main function 
was to hoot or whip when the horses did not seem going 
fast enough. He would find that each boy required peculiar 
treatment, and if the man were wise and loving, his work 
would be noble work indeed. Boys are beautifully tractable, 
and if they only feel that the master sympathizes with them 
and is really anxious to get them on, his influence is enor- 
mous. But who is sufficient for these things? One wants to 
give the school hours only to one's school work, and one has 
to knock off things as quickly as possible. One cannot always 
be wise, always anxious for the greatest possible good of one's 
pupils, always in good spirits and good temper. 

' Kind Nature is the best, those manners next 
Which fit us like a nature second hand, 
Which are indeed the manners of the great.' 

"This is the universal experience in the matter of manners. 
If we were always kind, considerate, and unselfish, there would 
be no need of politeness. But this cannot be so. We are at 
times petulant, and overbearing, and inconsiderate, and there- 
fore it is found best that we should by habit acquire a manner 
which conceals these unpleasant things and makes us simulate 
what is good for the sake of being gentlemanlike. Considera- 
tions of this kind have made me lately wish to mechanise 
education, or rather instruction. If we could have a certain 
form impressed on us by habit and thus secure our main- 
taining a tolerably good manner and method, would not this 



Thoughts on teaching 73 

be better than setting out with good principles and good inten- 
tions and trusting to them to supply manner and method as 
we went along? We are apt to forget principles or to draw 
wrong conclusions from them. Our good intentions will not 
always enable us to act wisely, and in many cases they will 
break down in the worries of school life. Might not good 
forms come to our aid? Perhaps they would no more check 
the influence of right principle and good intention than polite- 
ness checks the action of heartfelt kindness and noble disin- 
terestedness which are altogether above its level." 

About the end of 1878 Quick was asked to stand as a 
candidate for the office of Inspector to the schools of the 
Girls' Public Day School Company and readily consented. 
The thought of holding the first inspectorship of secondary 
schools that had been created in England attracted him 
greatly, and though the most modest of men, he considered 
that for this post he was exceptionally qualified. He was 
fired with visions of the uses to which he would turn his 
new office, the precedents he would set, the reforms he would 
introduce — "lectures to teachers, suggestions about school 
books, examinations of teachers, establishment of libraries 
both for teachers and scholars." These Alnaschar dreams 
were rudely broken by a letter from the Chairman of the 
Company announcing the appointment of another gentleman, 
and the Diary makes no attempt to conceal the bitterness of 
the disappointment, though it frankly allows that he alone is to 
blame for the failure. 

"The loss to the schools and to me has been brought 
about by my self-importance and irritability. In my own 
mind I certainly did put the good of the schools first, but 
I expected other people to see my merits as clearly as I saw 
them myself (could any expectation be more ridiculous !•), and 
I allowed myself to be nettled and to show that I was nettled 
when they shewed themselves undiscerning. I ought to have 
made up my mind that I wanted the post and then have tried 



74 R. H. Quick 

my best to get it. Men's merits are not often recognised as 
they were at the Olympic games, when the victors had the 
town walls pulled down to let them in. I see now that if one 
is too proud to enter the town by the common gate one ought 
to have a tent to camp outside." 

In 1879 the Senate of the University of Cambridge, acting 
on a memorial addressed to the two Universities by the Head- 
masters' Conference, passed a grace appointing a Teachers' 
Training Syndicate. The principal function entrusted to the 
Syndicate was the institution and regulation of an examination 
in the Theory, History, and Practice of Education and the 
award of certificates both in Theory and in Practical Effi- 
ciency. It was also empowered to appoint lecturers in the 
three branches. How this latter recommendation was carried 
out in the first instance the Note-books will tell us sufficiently, 
but it may be worth while to correct an exaggerated notion 
of the dignity and emoluments of a Lecturer which we find 
in the sketch of M. Parmentier from which we have already 
quoted. ' Up till then [his leaving Harrow] ' the French 
professor writes, ' his modesty had kept him from holding 
any important position, but the moment was approaching 
when justice would be done him. In 1879 a course of lec- 
tures on the History of Education was opened at Cambridge, 
and Quick was appointed to the Chair. This time c'etait 
Vhomme a sa place, it was the right man in the right place. 
He remained there till 1883, when his headaches compelled 
him to resign the post and he re-entered the ministry.' 

M. Parmentier not unnaturally supposes that Quick took 
rank as a University Professor, a Professor extraordinarius, 
with dignity and emolument according, the fact being that 
he was appointed ad hoc to give a set of eight lectures for 
one term of the academic year with an honorarium of ^25 for 
the course. He was, it is true, reappointed, but in England 
to lecture on Education does not provide a man with a pro- 
fession, or indeed with bread and butter. 



Cambridge lectures 75 

Lectures at Cambridge for Teachers' Training Syndicate 

"18 Oct. '79. First, lecture on Education in University 
of Cambridge. This may prove an event in the history of the 
University, but no beginning could be less promising. There 
has been a notion in the minds of a few leading men, that the 
University should do something for the training of teachers. 
Nobody thought the opposite and so the scheme was allowed 
to pass. But who cares about the subject ? The dons don't, 
and if they did they would naturally read about it rather than 
come to lectures. Undergraduates don't care about it. They 
of course are affected by the feeling of their elders, and there 
is no likelihood of their valuing a subject of this kind when 
their seniors are one and all indifferent to it. Besides, the 
undergraduate has regular subjects for examinations and his 
mind is concentrated on these. There might be a few stray 
bachelors but not enough for an audience. To-day I found 
that my audience was composed almost entirely of young ladies 
from Newnham and Girton. There were from eighty to ninety 
of them and from ten to fifteen men. Besides Oscar Browning, 
who came officially, there were I think two dons and eight or 
ten young men. The lecture was in one of the new rooms 
called ' Literary Schools' opposite St John's College; these 
schools abut on a piece of ground used as a play-ground by the 
St John's choristers, as I was informed. Who the boys were I 
cannot say, but the noise they made was such as to prevent 
the possibility of any lecture being of use. Neither lecturer 
nor lectured could attend to much besides the boys. I had 
written my lecture very carefully, but not with a view of read- 
ing it to school girls, and I am afraid they were as much 
disappointed as I was. They were all armed with pencils and 
paper and expected to have a lot of facts given them to jot 
down. One of the absurd effects of our so-called ' education ' 
is that young men and women acquire an insatiable thirst for 
facts. If I had only told these young people when and where 



76 R. H. Quick 

Aristotle was born, and what his father's name was, and the 
names of his writings; or coming to our own country, if I had 
given them the dates of the foundations of our chief schools 
and the names of the first headmasters, they would have been 
quite happy and taken it all ' schwa rz an weiss getrost nach 
Haicse? But they never ask themselves whether a thing is 
worth remembering. They have a vague notion that such 
things may be asked in examination, and what is education 
but learning, and what is learning but preparing for examina- 
tions? How can one do any good lecturing school girls in 
this frame of mind? Die Thatsache an sick ist nichts. Till 
we have given our young people an inkling of this truth our 
education is a failure. 

"20 Oct. 1879. I was a good deal disappointed with the 
effect of the first Cambridge lecture on Education. If no one 
but a dozen men or appreciative women had been there, I 
could have given the lecture with much more satisfaction to 
everybody. An auditor who does not feel interested, does not 
go for nothing. He exerts a negative influence. That four- 
fifths of my audience would not care for what I was saying or 
even understand it, quite destroyed my pleasure in lecturing, 
and if the lecturer is bored everybody else is sure to be. The 
most successful lecture I ever gave was to half-a-dozen people 
at the Schools at Westminster (Goffin's) : they were thoroughly 
amused and we all enjoyed it. Nobody was thinking of 
examinations, and there was not a fact-hunter present. These 
fact-hunters are silly people. Bricks are useful in building, but 
if we are not just going to build, it is very stupid to fill one's 
pockets with bricks. 

"24 Oct. '79. I gave my second lecture the day before 
yesterday. There was a falling-off from 100 to 68, but I 
believe some came to the first lecture who did not intend 
coming any more. There were about ten men at the second 
lecture. I am somewhat vexed that not a single one of my 
personal acquaintance, old or young, should have come, but 



Cambridge lectures 77 

this is a trifle. What is of much more moment is that the 
subject is utterly despised by the University public. As to 
lecturing, I can't say that I have had any success as yet. It 
is, I think, a mistake to give just what books would give. 
What would make excellent reading might be just the wrong 
thing for a lecture : and a very good lecture might soon spin 
out in the book form. I hold that lectures should in the 
first place excite interest. They should also leave a strong 
impression of a few truths. The last lecture I made a syllabus 
of, and had it printed. When I came to make this syllabus, I 
found the lecture contained a good deal too much. It would 
be far better to take a few important points and enlarge on 
them (with Huxley for one's model), than to touch on a 
variety of things. I wish I could rewrite the lectures and 
syllabise ahead, but this I have never managed to do. I 
always follow my pen. James Ward was saying of G. H. Lewes 
that his clearness of style was more apparent than real. Every 
sentence was clear by itself but the meaning of the whole was 
unsatisfactory. This I fancy is a very common fault. 

"25 Oct. '79. I lectured for the third time to-day. I 
can't say much for the lecture : it talked about too many things 
and left no total impression. There was something about 
Plato, Xenophon, Aristotle, the Romans/ Quintilian, Plutarch, 
and Early Christianity. This is not the right thing at all. I 
did indeed, in connection with some of the people I have 
named, mention interesting questions which were not yet 
decided, but I mentioned them only and did not go into them. 
Still the lecture was fairly successful and for this reason — my 
audience proved a tolerably large one. The mere fact that a 
good many people (nearly a hundred) came, gave everybody a 
notion that the lecture was worth coming to, and when this per- 
suasion seizes the minds of the audience, the battle is half won. 

" A wretched dog kept barking at the back and so dis- 
tracted my attention that it nearly spoilt everything again. 

" It seems to me, after all, that speaking, not reading, is the 



78 R. H. Quick 

proper thing. If one can't do without the written lecture be- 
fore one, one ought to know it so well that a glance now and 
then at the MS is enough. That at least is my feeling. One 
wants one's eye for one's audience. Of course persons who 
write very superior rhetoric — Henry Melvill, e.g. or now- 
a-days Farrar — can roll out their long sentences and rivet 
people's attention by sound only, but it takes a very good 
rhetorician to do this." 

Pourparlei's for a headmastership 

Quick, as we have seen, considered himself pre-eminently 
fitted for an Inspectorship of High Schools, and though it may 
be doubted whether he would long have stood the wear and 
tear of an ' uncommercial traveller's ' life, yet we may well 
regret that he was not allowed to try the experiment. His 
' Visits to Schools ' show how capable he was of acute observa- 
tion and sympathetic criticism. With a headmastership the case 
was different. In some of the most essential qualifications — 
energy, versatility, despatch — he was lacking, and knew himself 
to be lacking. When in 1880 friends suggested that he should 
apply for the headmastership of Hurstpierpoint, vacant by the 
retirement of Dr Low, he at once rejected the notion ; but a 
proposal from Dr Low that he should offer himself tempted 
him so far that he consented to see the Rev. N. Woodard, with 
whom the appointment rested, and talk the matter over with 
him. As might have been anticipated in five minutes the busi- 
ness was settled in the negative. What Mr Woodard wanted 
was a headmaster to strengthen and confirm the Churchman- 
ship of the school. Quick at once avowed that he was not a 
High Churchman, and the business was at an end. Quick was 
asked to stay for the night, and after dinner his host expounded 
freely his aims and methods, much as Bishop Blougram did to 
Gigadibs. We get a lifelike, though doubtless a partial portrait, 
a Kodak as it were, of a very remarkable man, the modern 
apostle of middle-class education. 



A headmaster ship 79 

The conception of what proved his life mission (so Quick 
was told) dated back to the years when he was a curate in 
an East-end parish near the London Hospital. Here he made 
the people devotedly attached to him, and they would come 
to church to please him, but he found them hopelessly ignorant 
of the very rudiments of the Church's teaching and too old to 
assimilate the doctrine that he sought to instil into them. 
Hence the idea was forced upon him that people must be 
brought up to be Churchmen, and his scheme of schools was 
gradually evolved. For education per se he cared nothing, 
and he did not think people were the better for secular instruc- 
tion. Like Mrs Gaskell's Lady Ludlow he considered that 
they made far better servants in the good old times, when they 
could neither read nor write. 

The impression left on Quick was " a fine old fellow, some- 
what egotistical and narrow, a Tory of the Sir Robert Inglis 
type, a man of strong will and boundless energy, with a firm 
belief in his own ideas, tempered only by a saving sense of 
humour, humour of the George Anthony Denison type." 

He had heard Seeley lecture to a class of some 170, and 
rejoiced that to the big men there comes success at last. 
With small men like himself it must very often happen that 
they fail altogether. 

" The only thing I see remarkable in my own case is that 
after success that I never should have dreamt of, I am failing 
in a way that no one would have thought possible. That an 
ex-master of Harrow should utterly fail to get pupils is a 
marvellous thing, and seems to point to some great disquali- 
fication, but what that is I can't imagine. . . . Everybody seems 
to unite in assuring me that I am not of the slightest use, 
and can't be and shan't be. This is a painful experience for 
a man of 50, who wishes to make his experience tell for other 
people's benefit. 

"On Wed., 19 Oct., I lectured again at Cambridge. Audi- 
ence, four ladies. This would have a good deal disappointed 



80 R. H. Quick 

me some time back, but my late experience has rendered me 
quite impervious to feelings of disappointment of such a kind. 
People don't know anything about the history of education and 
don't want to know, and there is nothing popular in my style 
of lecturing, so I don't the least wonder that people don't come." 
In 1 88 1 Quick determined to give up the day-school in 
Orme Square and start a preparatory school for boarders. 
The obvious reason for the change was that the London 
school was hardly paying its way, but he was further urged 
by the desire of gaining more intimate knowledge of child 
nature and character than is possible when intercourse is 
restricted to school hours. There was, moreover, that ever- 
present motive which was one of the mainsprings of his life, 
the love of change, that roving spirit ever thirsting for new 
experiences which Tennyson has pourtrayed in his ' Ulysses.' 
This time he pitched his tent near Guildford, in a new house 
pleasantly situated on the slope of the downs. For a descrip- 
tion of the Guildford school, if half-a-dozen pupils (which was 
the maximum limit) can be called a school, I am indebted to 
the reminiscences of an old pupil, which give a vivid impres- 
sion both of his manner and his methods of instruction. 

Guildford 

Just before starting his preparatory school at Guildford 
he had experience of teaching a single pupil. The diary at 
starting is all couleur de rose. The pupil, a boy of 13, is 
bright, willing, and teachable, though he has been badly 
trained. He has done quadratics, but fails in simple addi- 
tion, knows about indices, but has never heard of an index, 
can do 'least common multiple,' but cannot define a mul- 
tiple. As time goes on there is considerable friction. The 
boy dawdles over his work, his attention flags, he forgets 
what he is told, and when he is pulled up, sulks. " He 
puts a kind of false bottom to his mind by taking everything 
he remembers or thinks he remembers as axioms from which 



Guildford 81 

everything is to start." ' The boy at last proves a very incubus. 
The inference Quick draws is that the ordinary boy will not 
get on without competition. The boy who covets knowledge 
for its own sake or is eager for self-improvement is a black 
swan, and if there is no natural desire to excel, the tutor has 
no stimulus to apply, and is nonplussed. He goes on to 
generalise : — 

" This getting hold of the will of the pupil is not thought 
of in most schemes of instruction. Lord Spencer 1 says you 
must teach this or that in Standard iv., because most of the 
children leave school when they have passed Standard iv. 
He does not reflect that little street urchins of nine years 
old don't want to know ' the chief features of land and 
water on the globe,' and that till they want to know it is of 
no use trying to teach them. The will of the teacher may 
exact from them the repetition of forms of words, but these 
words will not be connected with ideas and will soon be 
forgotten. 

" I have spoken of poor Lord Spencer, but I think that 
his lordship, who has been put to preside over education 
mainly, I believe, because he was not wanted in Ireland, 
and being a lord who has held office could not well be left 
out in the cold, has no notion at all on the subject, and 
merely echoed what he had been told by Mundella. In the 
interview with MacCarthy and Co. to which I am referring 
Mundella said, ' It is desirable that a boy in the 4th Standard 
should have some outline of English history in his mind, and 
that he should know something in skeleton or outline of 
geography,' and being ' desirable,' that is no doubt the 
object of Mr Mundella's New Code. When a man starts 
off to give gamins who leave school at nine or ten an outline 
of English history and an outline or skeleton of geography, 
some astounding piece of folly is the only result possible." 

About this time, too, he found a new interest which, during 
1 The then Lord President of the Council of Education. 
G 



82 R. H. Quick 

the last decade of his life, engrossed no inconsiderable part 
of his thoughts and time. As early as 1877 he was invited 
by the Educational Council of Yorkshire to give a course of 
lectures on some educational subject. Under the date 26 Sept. 
1877 he writes : " Leeds. I lectured on Monday, with Dr Gott 
in the chair — a good audience — the Philosophic Hall nearly 
full. I almost think I should like lecturing if I had more 
practice and could acquire the art of expanding what I had 
to say." 

" I lectured at Birmingham on the Teacher's use of Memory. 
I was not in my best form, but was more successful than usual. 
I attracted a very good audience, and they were, most of them 
at least, my equals in intellect, so they saw quickly enough 
what I meant. Very often I have lectured to half-educated 
girls who could not follow me. Besides this, I can lecture 
with more assurance and make my points better now that I 
am getting old and feel more assured of my position. It is 
very pleasant to feel that one is taking the audience along 
with one." 

Reminiscences of Guildford by an old pupil 

1 1 went down from Waterloo with Mrs Quick. Mr Quick 
met us at Guildford station. I was first struck with his brown 
eyes and his quick way of speaking, giving three or four words 
fast and then pausing before the next. 

' School did not begin for two days after, and so I was alone. 
After tea in the old back dining-room, he took me over the 
house, via the front staircase, which was the only one I knew 
for those two days. Up in the ' dormitory ' he shewed me my 
bed, basin, and ' locker,' so called because it fastened with a 
button. 

'After this he took me down to the breakfast-room in the 
front, shewed me a pile of books, and after a short discussion 
on the relative merits of Tom Brown and Eric, left me to 
myself till dinner. I don't know whether he thought of that, 



Guildford 83 

very likely, but I became particularly attached to that room 
which had a view towards London and of the railway which 
would take me back to it in 13 weeks. 

' After prayers he took me up to my bedroom. He wouldn't 
let me spend my first night away from home in an attic all 
by myself, but put me into a spare room near the rest of the 
household. In the second term when, for some reason, the 
other two boys were away, I was again asked whether I should 
like to go there instead of to the top of the house. 

' The next day the two day boys from the rectory next door 
came in for an hour's writing lesson, in which I joined them. 

' I was one of the three boarders who formed half the school 
for the last two terms of its existence, that is, the summer and 
winter terms of 1882. Our ages ranged from 10 to 13. 

' The day began with prayers in the breakfast room. In the 
matter of meals, we were treated as members of the family, 
having breakfast, dinner, and high tea with them. In my first 
term they had late dinner and then we were ' clapped down ' 
(a school bell was a later institution) to biscuits and cheese 
after. 

' After breakfast we went down to the playroom, an empty 
billiard-room in the basement, where we played squash rackets 
or a species of football with a small ball (Association) with 
which Mr Quick kept us supplied. 

'The schoolroom was on the first floor. Work began at 
9.30 with half-an-hour's Scripture. Each of us had a copy of 
S. Matthew, and one read two or three verses. The lecture 
which followed would sometimes be as much concerned with 
the phrasing of a passage as with its teaching. I was a long 
time one day in being reconciled to ' Do not even the publicans 
so ' — I wanted ' publicans do so ' ; and I don't believe I was 
quite convinced by 10 o'clock. Occasionally, a hymn would 
take the place of reading. 

'At 10 o'clock we got out Welch and Driffield's Eutropius 
and construed. (All books were ' lent ' to us.) As far as I 



84 R. H. Quick 

remember we never prepared the part beforehand ; he preferred 
to introduce us to new ground himself. We didn't do more 
than about six lines at a time and went over the back parts 
again and again. 

' After construing we went to our places, but what to do I 
can't remember, as I think we had the previous evening's 
corrections returned to us later. 

'At about ii we went down to the playroom for 10 
minutes. The time till 12 or 12.30 was always devoted to 
Arithmetic. He explained the system of notation — parcels 
of io's — and the meanings of the operations of g.c.m., l.c.m., 
rule of 3, practice, &c, decimals, measurements of angles 
in degrees, &c. At first we were made to do multiplication 
and division sums by addition and subtraction, and it was not 
till we had thoroughly grasped the principle that we were 
allowed to employ the ordinary methods. I don't remember 
any geometry except something about the meaning of ' a right- 
angled triangle.' 

' In the afternoon we went out till 3, except in the very hot 
weather, when we started work at 2 and went out at 4. 
At first he came himself with us, but afterwards an old pupil 
of his took us. Mr Quick was a great believer in hoops (very 
strong on the subject of sticks, not hooks), and we often took 
them to the Downs, where he would spend a good half-hour in 
patiently standing at the bottom of a scree to catch our hoops 
with a hockey stick as we sent them spinning down from the 
top. Perhaps he grasped the opportunity it gave of developing 
our winds on the rapid ' up ' journey. 

'The afternoon work was generally of an indefinite kind, at 
least so it seemed to me. We never had Latin but once, and 
this infringement of our liberty caused quite an entente. 

- Geography was taught us in chats about his life in Germany, 
each having a map. After one of these we would draw a river 
from the map, marking principal towns near and tributaries. I 
don't once remember drawing a complete map. In my time 



Guildford 



85 



we went all up the Rhine to the Black Forest, and thence 
down the Danube. 

1 We were taken to very different country in Winter Evenings, 
which became our stock reading-book when we had finished 
Alice in Wonderland. We had it out once or twics a week, 
and a map to South America was a permanent item among the 
wall decorations. ' Blank Map ' was an especial treat, and I 
think was only brought out two or three times. It was a 
coloured map of England, having counties, towns, and rivers 
marked, but not named. A plain wand — plainer even than 
an amateur donkey- driver's — did the business, and places (in 
class) were made and lost with bewildering rapidity. 

' History was given to us by Mrs Quick, once a week, when 
Mr Quick went up to town. 

' A French lesson consisted in dictating a story which served 
as material for several exercises. Also we had a verb to write 
out in tabular form nearly every evening. I should say we 
never had any systematic grammar lesson. The following is a 
specimen of exercise : — 

Maitre Corbeau sur un arbre perche 
Tenait en son bee un fromage. 
Maitre Renard par l'odeur allech6, 
Lui tint a-peu-pres ce langage. 

' For translation : — 

1. The fox was a flatterer. 

2. The smell of the cheese was good. 

3. The fox wished to have some. 

a crow 4. The crow was on the tree. 

a tree 5. He had something in his beak. 

a beak 6. It was some cheese. 

the cheese 7. The fox was under the tree. 

the fox 8. Upon which the crow was perched. 

1. The crow was perched upon a tree. 

2. He held in his beak a cheese. 



86 R. H. Quick 



3 



The smell of the cheese was good. 



Master Fox was attracted by it. 
He wished to eat some cheese. 
But how to get it? 
The fox was cunning and a flatterer. 
He spoke thus to the crow. 

' For German, he taught us the Loreley, and gave it as the 
holiday task between my two terms. I don't remember ever 
doing any grammar or verbs. 

' We often had poetry ; we read it aloud in class, he shewing 
us how to render each line, and often returned to old pieces. 
Among those we learnt were — Trelawny — Good News from 
Ghent — Burial of Sir John Moore — The Royal George — The 
Lark — and a sonnet, whose construction he carefully explained 
and which I could — once. 

' We each had two small note-books, one in which we wrote 
words which we persisted in spelling wrongly, and the other for 
notes and definitions of all kinds, such as — what is a sonnet — 
what is a simile — what is a metaphor, and what are the four 
things necessary to a metaphor? (i) a thing to be carried, (2) a 
carrier, (3) a place to be carried from, (4) a place to be 
carried to. 

' Afternoon school finished with giving out about seven 
sentences for translation in the evening. These generally had 
some connection with each other, and with the Eutropius of 
the morning ; Romulus figured more often in them than Balbus, 
though Balbus was not entirely ignored. 

' He only used the words in Eutropius as far as we had gone, 
and the vocabulary in the book was the only dictionary used. 

1 We spent the evening as we liked, reading our own books, 
or one of a selection in the room. One evening we did not so 
spend, and while he was having his tea, having come home 
late, there was a sound as of a violent impact between a human 
body and a nearly closed door and then — a death-like silence. 
He entered the schoolroom and found three little boys all in a 



Guildford 8j 

row, not doing anything, not even talking. He asked A the 
cause of the acoustical vibrations which had reached him. 
A said he didn't know. , For this offence all the boarders in 
the school were made to follow him down stairs and to sit in 
silence till he had finished tea. Then all were liberated but A ; 
B confessed that he thought the noise was due to his {£) 
having stumbled against -the door, but the explanation was 
too thin. When A was conducted back to us we learnt that 
our punishment was not for the noise, but for professing 
utter ignorance of anything having ever occurred which could 
be described by such a name. 

'Another evening two of us were alone, one-third of the 
boarders being ill. He came in and set us at noughts and 
crosses. But oh, the next morning, when he shewed us how 
we had scratched the blackboard ! 

' One afternoon he told us to get out Winter Evenings and 
turn to a certain page, read it carefully, and note the number 
of times the word 'when' occurred in it. (I said once; it 
really, according to the majority, of which he formed one, 
occurred twice.) On another occasion he took one boy outside. 
Presently, another was summoned. Later, the first reappeared 
with a mysterious countenance, and the third went out. At last 
it came out, as he and the last came in. He had told a story 
to the first, who told it to the second — after his manner — who 
likewise ' repeated ' it to the third, and so on, till the sixth was 
closeted with Mr Quick, who chuckled at each point of likeness 
to the original as the recital proceeded. 

' He was very fond of telling us a story and getting us to 
write it out immediately after. Some of these were — The 
Brave Tin Soldier — The Larks and the Tanner — King Log 
and King Stork — The Crow and the Pitcher. My effort on 
the last has a comment on the use of the relative pronoun — 
'and gradually the water rose to the brim, which she could 
reach, with which she quenched her thirst.' 

"So she quenched her thirst with the brim ! " 



88 R. H. Quick 

' The whole of one morning before 1 1 was given to 
Captain Parr, who gave us a splendid account of the Arctic 
Expedition. The next morning we had to write out an account 
of it. Likewise, when he took us to the circus, we had to 
write an account in letter form. All these were done in school 
hours. 

' At one time the whole school did drawing. I think the 
master came once a fortnight, and we had one afternoon's 
practice between. All three boarders had a music lesson once 
a week, and half-an-hour's practice or — -no pudding. 

' A skipping-rope had found its w r ay into the schoolroom 
one day. As the result, the first half-hour of afternoon school 
was devoted to the theory of knots. Since then I have never, 
before then I invariably, made a granny. 

'When the big comet of '82 was on view, he, at the 
universal request of the boarders, came up and called us all 
at 3 o'clock. 

' The above-mentioned A, having constructed a very efficient 
form of ' projector' (for principle see Troissart), Mr Quick 
reserved for it his best elastic bands as long as it continued to 
be used. The same brain conceived, and the same hands 
executed, a sort of fiddle with an adjustable, i.e. twistable 
bridge by which the twangs could be made distinguishable to a 
highly-trained ear. Mr Quick soon replaced the whipcord 
' elastic filaments ' with spare violin string ends. An officially 
recognised institution was a money-box. With its contents he 
got illustrated papers for a hospital, and at the last, about a 
dozen or more hoops for the workhouse boys. 

' When we went to bed after prayers he came up too and 
read under the gas. For about five minutes after we had said 
our prayers we had to keep silence, till he gave the word. 

' On Sundays, we learnt the Collect before church. In the 
afternoon he took us for a good walk, S. Martha's being a 
favourite. After tea we had to keep the ' silent hour ' in 
which we might not talk, nor write letters, nor read fairy tales. 



Guildford 89 

This was a good way of sending us through the ' selection ' in 
the book-case. 

'The evening was spent in the drawing-room, when 
Mrs Quick read some school stories ; there was a good selec- 
tion of puzzles at hand too. 

'The only sort of imposition I remember is having to 
rewrite a set of Latin sentences with E's which could be 
distinguished from C's, and this was after repeated admonitions 
had been disregarded. 

' His system of marking was this : — 

<i=*poor; 2 = fair; 3 = good; 3^= good and a tenth of a 
*G' given; 4 = very good and a fifth of a 'G' given. Very 
occasionally a whole ' G ' was given on the strength of a single 
paper. The ' G's ' were written on a card, one row for each 
boy, and when the whole school had put together 20 G's since 
the last making up, we had a half-holiday. 

' On the other hand, such a thing as O was sometimes to be 
seen, and O^^B, cancelled a whole G. 

' After leaving us in the bedroom he went downstairs, but he 
had not finished with us. One of us had a hot bath every 
night, and he always paid a visit to the bath-room with his 
book, staying 10 minutes or so. 

' The first morning that I was late — the gong sounded while 
I was in the quite early stages — I was seized with an awful 
panic and stayed up by my bed, and, for want of something 
better to do, started the waterworks into brisk action. In 
about 10 minutes the familiar tread approached, and with a 
casual remark about tears not putting time back, he took me 
down to breakfast. 

' Afterwards, both A and I were late two mornings running. 
We had therefore to present ourselves in the schoolroom 
10 minutes before the gong sounded, until further notice. This 
* further notice ' came on the second day of successful perform- 
ance ; and we specially remarked that he shook hands with a 
lateral motion — a sure sign of approval.' 



90 R. H. Quick 

The above narrative of a pupil written after a lapse of ten 
years shows that Quick's methods of teaching and discipline 
produced permanent impressions. He himself, however, was 
dissatisfied and inclined to lose heart. 

" 18. ii. '82. I cannot help regretting that I shall never 
have, as far as I can see, any chance of completing my experi- 
ment in elementary education. I can't say that the results so 
far have come up to my expectations. I have made the school 
hours easy, I have endeavoured to interest boys in their work, 
and in this I have succeeded. I have succeeded too to some 
extent in getting the boys to inquire into the meaning of words 
and seek clear ideas. But in these days everything is tested 
not by the boy's power of work or method of working, but 
simply by what he has learnt, which is a very different thing. 
I am inclined to believe that in the end a boy would actually 
learn more by working with all his mind than by simply going 
over and over the same thing till it was fixed in the memory, 
but I must confess that the positive results are as yet dis- 
appointing." 

In 1879, Quick undertook for the Pitt Press Syndicate the 
editing of Locke's Thoughts concerning Education. It seemed 
to him a national disgrace that the one classical work on 
education that we could then boast, though it had been trans- 
lated into most European languages, should never have been 
edited in England, and that even for the text the student had 
to go to Germany or America. Though professedly founded 
on Mr Fox Bourne's Life, the Biographical and Critical Intro- 
duction is a pregnant and close pressed essay of some forty 
pages, involving no little original research. Previous critics in 
England — Hallam, Professor Fraser, Mr Fowler — had either 
ignored or slurred over the educational side of Locke's life and 
writings and attended only to his philosophy. This defect 
Quick for the first time makes good, gathering together Locke's 
experiences as a tutor, pointing out the relation in which he 
stands to his predecessors, Rabelais, Comenius, Montaigne, and 



A* retrospect 91 

showing how his educational theories are deductions from his 
general philosophy. 

" 23 March, '80. Cambridge. I took in the last copy on 
Saturday night and Locke is rolled off my mind. I have been 
so much engaged with the book lately that it was constantly 
buzzing in my brain. The only alternative subject has been 
politics. When my mind gets in this state I keep remembering 
rather than thinking. The subject haunts my mind ; if I with- 
draw my thoughts from it, I find in a minute or two that they 
have worked back to it. And yet the mind produces nothing. 
When the buzzing ceases no ideas remain. This buzzing is not 
a good thing, but I don't know how to stop it. When I turn 
for relaxation to poetry, I seem to have no interest in it. When 
I think of higher things I seem to have lost all power of emotion." 

' Nel mezzo ' 

"16. 6. '81. I was lately examining some old papers I 
came upon. They were scribblings of mine in 1853, twenty- 
eight years ago. I could not help feeling vexed that they were 
so good. How little I seem to have gained by eight-and- 
twenty years of manhood ! The first twenty years of life are 
the really most important after all. I suppose I have learnt 
something since, but I hardly know what. I am different now, 
to be sure, but it seems to me a difference of temperament 
rather than of knowledge or wisdom. 

"To-day I have been looking at books and trying to ar- 
range them and settle what to keep and what to throw away. 
The young man seems to have unlimited time before him ; the 
twenty years he looks back upon seem an age and he thinks he 
has twice that time before him as his working time. He there- 
fore gets together material of all kinds and has no doubt the 
time will come when he will find use for all. But at .fifty one 
sees that the time will never come. Life which looked so long 
in prospect, looks short indeed when two-thirds are known to 
be over, and one thinks the end may be nearer still. One looks 



92 R. H. Quick 

at one's books no longer as one's own, but with a consciousness 
that they will soon pass into other hands. At one time if I 
bought an old book I struck out the name of the previous owner 
before entering my own, but long since I have given this up 
and simply written my own name below the other. The life of 
a book is far longer than ours, and the name in it simply states 
who has the present use of it. I may remark by the way that 
in reading in the British Museum I have often come across 
small joking remarks scribbled in books two centuries or more 
ago, and there is something pathetic in thus overhearing as it 
were an observation made by someone who has been so long 
silent. 

" When one has fairly realised that the summit is passed, that 
there can be little improvement and will be much falling off, 
the great danger is the danger of becoming slack and lazy and 
indifferent. One's energy naturally decreases, and at the same 
time the great stimulus to energy - — ambition — is entirely with- 
drawn. Why should one struggle for success when one doesn't 
care a button about success? I know enough of the public 
and its opinion to have a supreme contempt for it. The public 
runs after everyone that can amuse it or in any way excite it. 
A good many years ago Seeley managed to do this with ' Ecce 
Homo,' but when the exciting mystery was over nobody cared 
to read him. For my part I have not the smallest sympathy 
with the incessant thought of the public, which I find especially 
strong among Americans. Just at present my experience makes 
me cynical. I fancied that I was pretty well known as a good 
authority on education, and that if I offered a really better 
training for children than they get generally I should have 
no end of applications from parents. But I find that any 
humbug can do with the help of puffing and lying w r hat I can- 
not do with every other advantage. So I have ' a down ' on 
the public. This acts in combination with my slackening 
energy to make me let things slide. But it is strange that the 
highest motives should need to be helped by inferior motives. 



A retrospect 93 

That no one seems to want one is really no reason why one 
should not try to be as useful as possible. To one's own 
Master one standeth or falleth, and happily the public is not 
my master. Still faith is so cold that the visible affects one far 
more certainly than the invisible. If I had to preach to a 
number of workhouse people or to children, I probably should 
take little pains about my sermon. If I had to preach to an 
audience of professional men, I should probably take a great deal 
of pains. And yet the pains would probably be much better 
bestowed upon the paupers or the children than on the parsons 
or doctors. But the consciousness that I should be exposed 
to slighting remarks, if I did badly, in the one case and not in 
the other, somehow would weigh with me more decidedly than 
any care for the welfare of the people I preached to or any 
thoughts of the Master's service. 

" 2 Feb. '82. . . .So I am in danger of losing the equable spirits 
that I had and of becoming somewhat morose. Still though I 
have only an old man and six rather common-place small boys 
to improve (not the material one would choose) I may manage to 
do something with that. At any rate I must beware of grumbling. 

" The interest I take in teaching small boys never seems to 
decrease, and in all elementary work I keep finding new things 
which take my fancy and please the boys. I don't ever find 
that I miss the excitement of numbers." 

"27 March '82. Now that the pressure of the weekly lecture 
at Cambridge is taken off I hope to recover to some extent the 
essayist attitude of mind. I usually spend my life under con- 
ditions similar to those of the London tramp. The policeman 
Duty shows himself the instant I want to stop and observe 
anything and orders me to ' move on.' So I never have a 
leisurely mind, and yet one cannot observe without leisure. I 
wish I could find time for reading, for when one has been in 
the society of men like Montaigne and Helps (alike in their 
essayism, tho' in little else) one catches their way of looking at 
things and can think about one's surroundings. 



94 R. H. Quick 

" 4 April '82. The young savages have gradually become 
civilised ; at meals they are only too quiet, and their talk 
when out for a walk though still uninteresting is quite in- 
offensive. And this change has been wrought without any 
repression and no punishment of any kind, except when 
they have been reported by the usher." 

Sedbergh 

In 1883 Quick accepted the living of Sedbergh, Yorks., to 
which he was presented by the Council of Trinity College, 
Cambridge. The net value of the living is set down in 
Crockford at ^360 and the population at 1800, and as the 
parish is a straggling one a curate is almost a necessity. The 
vacancy was not likely to attract any Fellow or ex-Fellow of the 
College, and the Council felt themselves fortunate in finding 
a member of the College who had made his mark in literature 
and served the University as Lecturer willing and able to 
accept the post. To Quick Sedbergh offered many attractions. 
Though undoubtedly his strongest bias was towards teaching 
and all connected with education, yet, as has been seen, he 
never even during his Harrow mastership entirely dropped the 
distinctive work of the ministry. To his kindly and sympathetic 
nature it was always more of a pleasure than a duty to visit 
the sick and aged, and though to the last the composition of a 
sermon was to him a laborious and often a painful process, yet 
he had a hankering for preaching, a consciousness that he had 
within him thoughts worth expressing, and that possibly effec- 
tiveness as a preacher would come into practice. 

The place itself, too, had strong attractions for him. The 
town consists of one long straggling street that fringes the base 
of Winder, a breezy hill from which you catch glimpses of the 
Lake country to the north. Below the town and parallel with 
the street runs the Rawthey, a tributary of the Lune, and at 
right angles to the south the broad and smiling valley of the 
Dent. The Vicarage stood just beyond the town at the east 



Sedbergh 95 

end, a tumble-down old house which has since been sold, 
but very quaint and picturesque, with a prime old-fashioned 
garden and a paddock. It seemed an ideal home for one 
whose highest ambition- was 'a philosopher's life in the quiet 
country ways,' who loved nature and beautiful scenery and 
wanted no other society than that of his own family and 
his books. Lastly there was the attraction of the old 
and famous grammar school, of which the Vicar is ex officio a 
governor. With this and his own Church schools he looked 
forward to still keeping in touch with the practice of education 
while pursuing at his leisure the theory. 

Such was the distant prospect. The Diary will shew how 
different the reality proved. He soon found that his duties as 
a parish priest absorbed all his time and energies, and that he 
enjoyed far less of learned leisure than at Guildford. And the 
worst disappointment to him was that this sacrifice seemed to 
him without compensation. Could he have seen the fruit of 
his labour and felt that he was a moral and spiritual force in 
his parish, he would have let pedagogics and research go by 
the board. As it was, his attempt to waken into life a sleepy 
hollow and to reform time-honoured abuses provoked bitter 
opposition and enlisted little sympathy. Yorkshiremen are 
proverbially cautious and suspicious of strangers.. Dissenters, 
who formed the majority of his parishioners, could not at first 
make out a parson who in the matter of charities and parochial 
offices shewed a perfect indifference between churchmanship 
and dissent, and suspected the simplest and most straight- 
forward of vicars since Dr Primrose of some Macchiavellian 
design. Church-folk on the other hand, when their accounts 
were scrutinised and their prerogatives questioned, regarded 
him as a traitor in the camp. To give a single instance, he 
found the teaching in the Church schools most unsatisfactory 
and inefficient and, rightly or wrongly, traced the cause to the 
incompetency of the Headmaster. He pressed upon the 
Managers the necessity of a change, and when he failed to 



96 R. H. Quick 

carry his point resigned the Chairmanship. This might have 
been overlooked as a pardonable fit of temper, but when he 
transferred his interest to the British schools and refused to 
preach the annual sermon and have a collection for the Church 
schools, on the ground that he could not plead for an institu- 
tion that was managed in a way of which he disapproved, the 
indignation of the Managers knew no bounds, and they 
threatened an appeal to the Bishop. It was about this time 
that a good old lady, one of the pillars of the Church, is said 
to have remarked, ' I can't help liking Mr Quick, he is so 
kind and gentle, but I do believe he has a devil! ' The fault 
was not all on one side. If the Sedberghians were slow to 
appreciate sterling worth and honesty, Quick was too ready to 
take offence, and, whenever he saw or fancied he saw injustice 
or wrong-doing, to tilt at it without counting the cost. He was 
singularly wanting in tact and he could not suffer fools gladly. 
In time he and his parishioners got to know one another better 
and they parted with mutual regret and good will. The four 
years at Sedbergh were not on the whole unfruitful or unhappy, 
but they were full of small worries and trials which absorbed all 
the time and energy that Quick had hoped to devote to his 
favourite study, and the only educational outcome of this 
period is the Notes on the mental development of his infant 
daughter. 

"13 Sept. '83. My life lately has taken a complete change, 
such as to remind one of the stratified life of the Jesuits. I 
have been in Sedbergh now nearly two and a half months and 
in that time I have hardly looked into a book. Living much 
in the open air I find myself much the stronger in health for it, 
and as I have had to preach I have not been thoughtless." 

"4 Oct. '83. To some extent I am suffering from reaction 
after being delighted with Sedbergh. I see such hosts of small 
matters that want mending in some sense or other, and all my 
time and thoughts go to attending to a round of minutiae 
which must however be looked after. The consequence 



Sedbergh 97 

is, I never find time for what is important. More and 
more I am impressed with the value of money. It seems 
the only force that acts properly in common life. I find 
something amiss about the vicarage-house. I tell a workman 
to attend to it, and soon after I find he has attended to it. 
But when no payment in money is to follow one speaks in 
vain. Not being affected by the money motive myself I am 
puzzled by its apparent omnipotence elsewhere. But after all, 
though money payments seem a necessary condition to ensure 
regular care and promptitude, money is not grasped at by the 
workpeople here; they seem to think of the work in and for 
itself. But they will do nothing except as a matter of business, 
i.e. nothing they are not paid for doing." 

A Quiet Day 

" 25. 10. '83. Yesterday I spent at Kirkby Lonsdale, at a 
sort of Retreat for the clergy (a ' quiet day ' is, I find, the correct 
term). I have at times been suspicious of these Retreats as 
fostering a fictitious frame of mind. Devotees of all religions 
have been able to work themselves up to religious frenzy by 
cutting themselves off from the ordinary thoughts and occupa- 
tions of life and letting their minds dwell on their peculiar 
doctrines. But if our faith be true it should occupy our minds 
far more than it does, and we let ourselves get so absorbed by 
the daily round, the common task, that some effort is needed 
to look at things as they are. For myself I must own that I 
am not meditative, and were I to attempt to go through the 
exercises prescribed by Ignatius Loyola I should probably sleep 
half the time. But I admit that when one listens to a mar. 
like Edward Bickersteth one feels oneself raised to a higher 
spiritual level." 

" 5 Nov. '8$. So long as we are not contented with things 
as they are, and are not only not contented but are trying to 
mend them, there is hope. No human being in his senses 
would be contented with things as they are here, and I trust I 

H 



98 R. H. Quick 

shall make not a few efforts to mend them ; so I should feel 
hopeful. But I have no longer the energy of a young man, 
and there is a terrible danger of my settling down into the con- 
dition of my predecessor, who made it the great object of his 
life to keep things as they were. This sort of conservatism is 
deadly, for the tree will not live if it is allowed to put forth no 
new shoots." 

Governing Bodies of Gi'ammar Schools 

As Rector of Sedbergh Quick was ex officio a Governor of 
the Grammar School, and it is needless to say that he became 
the most active, if not the most influential, member of that 
body. His experience led him to the conclusion that the 
constitution of these bodies (and Sedbergh is typical of a large 
class) is by no means ideal and may lead to, or at any rate fail 
to prevent, serious abuses. The difficulty, as it appears to 
him, is to supply the trustee with sufficient motive for doing 
his duty. He is generally appointed for life, and there is no 
one to whom he has to give an account of his stewardship. 
The prevailing custom is to elect upon the Board any landed 
proprietor or nobleman who lives in the neighbourhood. Such 
men have rarely the leisure to attend meetings regularly, and 
when they do come (so Quick complains) they give themselves 
airs. The consequence is that the business of the Trust is in 
most cases done in a perfunctory way by the paid clerk. The 
abvious remedy would seem to be some form of popular 
representation, either direct or indirect. 

Work and Leisure 

"23. 7. '85. As I grow old my capacity for the active 
business of life (never very great) seems to grow considerably 
less, while my desire (and, I fancy, my ability) to theorise on 
life seems to increase. But my time is so consumed with small 
things that I never get free and never feel free to think and 



Suspiria 99 

write. I am coming more and more to admire blind energy as 
Carlyle admired it. A man like M. with splendid energy for 
work gets through all he has to do and then has leisure, which I 
never have. But then it sometimes happens that when leisure 
comes to such men as M. they don't know what to do with 
it. There is no world of thought opened to them either by 
their own mind or by books. Which is worse, to know of 
a world of ideas into which one has not energy to penetrate, or 
to have plenty of energy but to be like Johnson's school girls 
'unidea'd?' The fact that strikes me most just now is the 
practically limitless number of things which to some extent one 
ought to do and also another limitless number of things which 
to some extent one would like to do. Among them few stand 
out as things that must be done, few are so attractive that one 
is tempted to give up everything else in order to do them. A 
selection has to be made. At best only some of the things can 
be done, and in point of fact chance seems to determine which 
shall be done and which left undone. 

"13 Oct. '85. I should indeed be ungrateful if I were dis- 
contented with life. I have blessings of every kind and am 
extremely happy. But am I making all that I might out of 
life? There seems to me a want of definite aim in my life, and 
consequently a want of persistent and consistent effort. Life 
such as mine seems to dwindle into the common-place. I 
seem always doing little things, and there is no reserve of 
thought and prayer that might raise these little things to a 
higher level. Faith in God involves faith in an endless ascent. 
I fail to raise others because I do not ascend myself. I have 
not proper belief in spiritual forces. I am too conscious of the 
weakness of what is seen and not conscious enough of the 
strength of what is not seen. 

" For instance, I go to the Sunday School and there I find 
a number of children engaged chiefly in cracking nuts and 
throwing about the shells. I don't see how they can get 
much good out of this any way, or how that school can be 



ioo R. H. Quick 

improved, as few will undertake a class, and those few of 
course have little skill as teachers. My discipline would be 
better, but I should probably drive away the children by it. 
The ordinary observer is unconscious of the faults ; persons 
like myself are shut up by them and fail to care about the 
school. I suppose the right-minded man would see the faults 
but would be conscious of some good attained notwithstanding. 
" I wish we believed in spiritual forces as the scientific folk 
believe in physical forces. The other day the huge rock that 
hemmed the passage between Long Island and New York 
was blasted. Between nine and ten years had been spent 
in charging it. When all was ready a little girl of eleven 
years old pressed a button and caused the explosion. No 
doubt there has often been a long preparation in the spiritual 
world and some word or action of ours brings about an effect 
which seems miraculous." 

Nearing the station 

" 15. 5. '86. Perhaps before the end of my journey I may 
be able to write some useful essays, working up the materials in 
these note-books. Now I am getting old my style will naturally 
get more diffuse, and up to the present time it has suffered, so 
far as I can judge, from stiffness. It is the more chatty and 
diffuse style that makes most impression on ordinary readers. 
The question is whether I shall ever find time. Perhaps the 
train has already begun to slacken speed and the brake will 
soon be put on, showing the station is not far off. Till lately 
one has thought of the station as at an immeasurable distance. 
It does not seem so now. What would one's feelings be if 
one believed it to be the terminus? As it is, the nearer one 
gets to the station, the more one's thoughts go beyond it. 
Like other members of the old-fashioned sect still known by 
the name given them at Antioch, I don't believe in the 
existence of a terminus." 



Advancing Years 101 

Tidying 

"15 June, '86. I have spent all yesterday and this morning 
in looking over books and papers. Strange vistas of the past 
rise up before me. I get a general impression of the immensity 
of things, and see how much we must give up for the sake of 
concentrating our short lives and still shorter energies on work 
in which we may get something done. 

" A man might almost be denned as a bundle of interests. 
Everything depends on the variety and intensity of our in- 
terests. Does the intensity vary inversely with the variety? 
I think not. But I have had to let some of my interests die 
of atrophy. I have, I believe, sufficient interest to make me 
very learned in geography or the lives and discoveries of 
travellers. If ever I read for amusement I should read auto- 
biographies and travels, but I never read a book without some 
more or less business object." 

Keeping decks clear 

" My father used to say that one of his best points as a 
man of business was that he never let stock hang on hand. 
If it would not sell at the price he asked or if the market 
went down, he never waited till he could find a man ready 
to give his price or till the market recovered. He would keep 
the decks clear and not get hampered with the old stuff. 

" I think this would be a most useful maxim for life gen- 
erally. We are so apt to store up things we may want or 
things that may come in handy. But very few of them do 
turn to account, and when we want a thing the chances are 
we can't find it, though it may have been worrying us to 
decide where it is to live till within a few weeks of our wanting 
it. Even of books one keeps a vast deal too many, and has 
not time to look at one per cent, of them." 

"12 July, '86. The coming event of my resigning this 
living, which is now quite settled in my mind, throws its shadow 
before, and at times gives me a feeling almost of leisure." 



102 R. H. Quick 



Leaving Sedbergh 

" 6 Jan. '87. I have to-day sent letter to the Bishop of 
Ripon, which completes my resignation of the living of Sed- 
bergh. The main things that I hope to gain from the change 
are : 1st, relief from overwhelming responsibility. 2nd, time 
for thought. 

" As for the first, I have at times felt the responsibility far 
more than I expected. I am responsible for the religious 
teaching of all these people. Perhaps the comfort which 
people so readily give themselves, ' I'm not worse than my 
neighbours,' is not unreasonable in this case. Tried by any 
standard based on the ideal I am fearfully wanting, but shall 
I benefit the parish by my resignation ? I might do it a great 
injury, and though I might also benefit it, this probability 
seems to me not so great as the other. 

"Then as to thought. W. H. Payne lays it down that 
thought and feeling vary inversely. This seems to me a very 
mischievous error. In some of its functions the intellect may 
be hindered by feeling, especially in acting judicially, but in 
other functions thought finds its motive force in feeling. The 
great enemy, as I have found, to thought is a constant stream 
of petty engagements — an enemy to feeling as well. Of course 
some employments, such as preaching, may and should lead 
to thought, though even these sometimes get discharged in 
a mechanical and thoughtless fashion ; but thought for an 
immediate purpose is always of a different kind to the ob- 
server's thought, the thought which comes to the essayist or 
theorist turn of mind : and all the lower occupations stop 
thought altogether. 

" Now it seems to me that thought on theory is much 
wanted. W. Welch says I am too theoretical. I seem to 
myself not theoretical enough, though I am perhaps more 
so than the ordinary Englishman. We Want to have an ideal 



Leaving Sedbergh 10 



o 



before us, and to see how we may approach or at least 
journey towards it. My efforts at this kind of thinking, both 
for myself and others, have been impeded by the time con- 
sumed in ' running ' myself, family and parish. I want more 
time. Shall I get it? Shall I make good use of it if I do? 
" I am getting to understand parish work now my parish 
work is over. The first requisite is that a man should feel 
that he has a gospel or good news for his people. I am 
afraid many men think they have in point of fact very bad 
news indeed for the great majority of them. I do not think 
so. The love of God declared in His Son seems to me the 
only good news which can hold its own against all adverse 
phenomena. For many years I did not feel that degree of 
confidence in the faith which is absolutely necessary before 
one can preach it heartily, but my difficulty has, thank God, 
decreased. Next, the parish parson must feel a genuine in- 
terest in the individuals of his flock. Here has been my 
great deficiency. I have not felt enough concern about in- 
dividuals. If I knew a man was given to drink, I might 
perhaps, when occasion offered, speak to him about it, but 
I have not felt that it was a personal concern of mine to 
rescue the man by all the means I could adopt, and not to 
rest till I had reclaimed him. And not only with those who 
were going wrong. My interest should have been extended 
to each and every one. To do this I must have lived for 
the parish and nothing but the parish." 

Redhill 

On resigning the living of Sedbergh Quick settled at 
Redhill. This was his last ' flitting.' He rented a pleasant 
little house, with a fair sized garden and small conservatory 
attached, just on the edge of Earlswood Common, and named 
Earlswood Cottage. The place exactly suited him, perfect 
country, yet within easy reach of London ; not that he often 



104 R. H. Quick 

went up to town, but friends were constantly running down 
to see him. It was a haven of rest after a life, not indeed 
of storm and stress, but of grinding work and chronic over- 
pressure. At last he was his own master, rid of all except 
self-imposed responsibilities, free to work when he liked and 
how he liked. For a while hoc ipsum dele c tab at, nihil age re, 
but he was too thorough a Teuton to relish for more than 
a few weeks the dolce far niente of a Roman man of letters. 
Nor had he to seek for occupation. Besides the pedagogic 
studies which he could now resume, work of various kinds 
poured in upon him by the natural force of gravitation. A 
leisured parson is a godsend in a neighbourhood, and a 
Sunday rarely passed without some call which Quick was 
far too good-natured to refuse. There were numerous re- 
quests from Teachers' Associations, Training Colleges and 
Schools, to lecture to them. This was work after his own 
heart except when it entailed his staying a night or more 
away from home. But his chief energies were absorbed in 
putting the finishing touches to the second edition of Edu- 
cational Reformers and seeing it through the press. To this 
period, too, belongs his edition of Mulcaster's Positions (pub- 
lished in 1888), a laborious piece of drudgery, considering 
that every word, and even the spelling of every word, was, 
with the assistance of his wife, carefully checked. The Ap- 
pendix, dealing with Mulcaster's life and writings, entailed 
considerable research and correspondence. Besides, a month 
rarely passed without his firing off some half-dozen Occasional 
Notes or a short article for the Journal of Education. Yet 
another side of his Redhill life is pourtrayed by M. Parmentier, 
who then made his acquaintance. 

1 At Redhill Quick passed a laborious life. The day was about 
equally divided between his pedagogic and literary studies and 
the hours devoted to his friends and correspondents. The four 
walls of his study were lined with book-shelves reaching to the 
ceiling. Among his library were to be found the first editions of 



Redhill 105 

Elyot, Mulcaster, Brinsley, Comenius, Hoole, &C. 1 The nucleus 
of this collection had been left him by his old friend Joseph 
Payne. His visitors had difficulty in finding a seat. Chairs, 
arm-chairs and sofa were strewed with books, pamphlets and 
reviews. Travelling scholars of all nationalities knocked at his 
door, some in quest of information, others requiring an in- 
troduction or a recommendation for some post, or not rarely 
pecuniary assistance. As he was in his own Fetch the most 
widely known of English writers, the number of his corre- 
spondents both at home and abroad increased from year to 
year. We Frenchmen must be ever grateful for his friendly 
courtesy. Great was his joy whenever he learned that some 
fresh student in our country was occupying himself with the 
history of education. He happened to learn through Mr Bass 
Mullinger that I was in search of ouvrages de premiere main 
on English pedagogics. Quick at once wrote to call my 
attention to two rare and curious works I was not likely to 
have come across. Since then I had often occasion to con- 
sult him and I never found him fail me. Less than a year 
before his death he was so extraordinarily obliging as to lend 
me, for as long as I required it, a volume that could not be 
procured for love or money, the Ludus Literarius of Brinsley. 
It was the copy from which he himself intended to prepare a 
new edition. That was Quick all over.' 

Earlswood Cottage, Redhill 

"8 July, '87. For some time past I have done nothing 
but ' move.' In this state of flux all mental vision becomes 
blurred and bewildering. No doubt even moving may be 
done well, i.e. with method and promptitude, but I do it badly, 
and can only admire the energy and skill it brings out in others 
— e.g. in my wife. 

1 After his death the pedagogic portion of his library was handed over 
by Mrs Quick to the Teachers' Guild, and is now kept at 76, Gower Street, 
in a separate bookcase labelled " Quick Loan Collection." 



106 R. H. Quick 

" One would like to think of life in constant progress. 
Physically of course the law for men over fifty is retrogression. 
Perhaps some of the mental powers, e.g. the powers of acquisi- 
tion, fall off, but we hope to gain in the net outcome of our 
experience — in wisdom. But we seem so different at different 
times ! Our wisdom consists in right and clear mental vision, 
clear not only within its limits, but so clear as to perceive the 
limits themselves. But when we have trained ourselves to 
observe and judge of a particular set of facts, the outward 
circumstances of our life may change and we may seem like a 
sailor on shore. Also we vary in ourselves from hour to hour. 
When fagged or depressed we find nothing in our consciousness 
that raises us or can raise us above the meanest banality. It 
requires an act of faith to admit that anything more exists. 
And life spent for a little while in any engrossing occupation, 
still more in any engrossing care or anxiety, seems to destroy our 
former selves and bury them as fossils in a bygone stratum. 
Still the reality must be very different. Wordsworth says, 

1 Through love, through hope, and faith's transcendent dower, 
We feel that we are greater than we know. 1 

Let us trust we are wiser ; we certainly are much more than we 
know. 

" In going over my possessions, especially my books, I find 
old clues that lead me back in memory to countless thoughts 
and efforts of days gone by. All these have passed away, but 
the effect of them remains, and is a part of my present self. 

" It takes at least two-thirds of life to find out how little time 
we really have for thinking to purpose ; it takes still more than 
two-thirds to find how little energy. In looking ahead we think 
there will be such and such time. Perhaps some outward let 
destroys this for the purpose intended ; still more likely some 
slight ailment or exhaustion deprives us of the necessary energy. 

"In our present state the machinery of life is far too ex- 
travagant of force. When one has arranged one's affairs, seen 



Retrospective 107 

one's callers and returned their calls, read one's letters and 
answered them, there is hardly any time left except for meals 
and for sleep. It seems to me a clear duty to reduce all these 
demands on one's time. As life goes on acquaintances increase, 
connections of all kinds increase, material possessions increase. 
Each of these demands every now and then a little time and 
attention. The demand is a small one and surely one can 
spare a moment or two. But in estimating the value of a x b 
you must take into account the size of b as well as of a. So 
long as a has any value not less than 1, ab maybe a formidable 
quantity if you run up the value of b. Therefore it is folly to 
let b increase indefinitely. Keep it down, even at the risk of 
seeming neglectful of the smaller proprieties." 

Living on a low level 

" It is difficult to do easy things well, such at least is my 
experience. When one has an incessant round of small tasks, 
one gets into an effortless way of going through them, and not 
only does not do them so well as one might, but leads the 
whole of one's life on too low a level. In short one turns 
Philistine and does without theory. Of course the best escape 
is by means of religious faith, which raises trifles into duties 
and requires them to be discharged in a Christian spirit. The 
round of small duties would not pull one down so, if one took 
even a few minutes two or three times a day for prayer and 
recollection. 

" Besides this I think one should spend a portion of the 
day with some great writer. One is disinclined to rise to the 
thoughts of a great writer, and one gets to prefer incessant 
grind, but whenever one does make the effort one feels the 
better for it and gets to understand one's true work. How few 
intimacies one has with great writers ! One has ' no time ' to 
cultivate their acquaintance. But one finds plenty of time to 
read newspapers and periodical twaddle which does one no 
good at all." 



io8 R. H. Quick 



The Note Books 

" 17. 8. '87. In indexing up old Note Books I have lately 
had to read a good deal of ray own writing. It is extremely 
devoid of what Matthew Arnold calls ' charm.' This comes 
in part from my always having written in a hurry. My object 
has always been just to get the thing expressed with the least 
possible expenditure of time. This has affected not only the 
language; it has affected the thought too, which often wants 
thinking out. But one claim to attention my writing has. 
I write because I think. Most writers, periodical writers 
especially, think because they write. This it is that makes a 
vast amount both of writing and preaching such poor stuff. 
It is the business of the writer or preacher to produce a certain 
amount of ' copy ' or speech, so he often has to think ad hoc ; 
and often l Wo Begriffe fehlen u. s. w.' 1 Even the best writers 
when forced to write sometimes come to the end of their 
thoughts and are compelled to furnish sham thought. I think 
I see this in Johnson's Rambler. Often the first half of a 
paper is made up of real thought and the other half of sham." 

Brain-tiredness 

" 24. 8. '87. I have for many years past been liable to get 
my brain tired by continuous attention to any one thing. 
Several years ago I got it terribly tired over editing Locke, but 
no harm came of it and I was not obliged to knock off. I 
could not then have worked as I worked for a year (1867-68) 
on Educational Reformers. I don't remember this brain- 
tiredness at all in those days, though I worked my ten hours a 
day. As I grow old I find that it is more and more easily set 
up. I have in the last two or three days written some 
Occasional Notes for the Journal of Educa lion, and corrected a 

1 Denn eben wo Begriffe fehlen, 
Da stellt ein Wort zur rechten Zeit sich ein. — Goethe's Faust. 



Autobiographical 109 

catalogue for the Teachers' Guild. Neither piece of business 
involved really hard work, but the continuous strain set up 
brain-tiredness. When thus tired I cannot go on without 
getting a wretched headache of a peculiar kind. Short of this 
I have a dull feeling in the brain verging on headache." 

Illuvies ephemeridum 

" 26. 8. '87. In looking over my collection of old tracts 
and periodicals about education I feel the kind of regret Victor 
Hugo expressed when he thought of all the drains of Paris 
running into the sea. What horrible waste ! Yes, indeed, mats 
le moyen de Vempecher ? The difficulty is that valuable as the 
stuff is in itself it is so fearfully watered 'down as to be 
practically useless. The quality is depreciated and the bulk 
enormously increased. We want some desiccating machinery, 
and I would gladly turn myself into a patent desiccator if life 
were twice as long." 

Looking over and destroying old papers 

" In many ways I have failed to discover the battle in life 
that one hears of in sermons and elsewhere. To be quite 
candid I don't know much about such a conflict. The work 
of my calling is to me my most pleasant employment ; and 
my chief temptation is to get engrossed by it and think of 
nothing else. I give way to this temptation no doubt — mats 
le moyen de s^en empecher, at all events when one has such an 
amount of work which must be done ? But one struggle I am 
always engaged in, and that is a struggle with my physical 
surroundings. I do not like disorder — far from it — but never 
having paid proper attention to keeping things in order, 
things at least are too many for me in both senses, and 
after trying hard to get them straight I fail. My difficulties 
arise from two sources : first I have a sort of ' acquisitive- 
ness/ which prevents me from throwing away things which 



no R. H. Quick 

' may come in useful.' One ought to have learnt by this 
time that such things do come in useful, but are constantly 
coming in useless and worse, as one every now and then has 
to reconsider the question of continuing to keep them, and 
of the best place to put them in. Secondly, I am always 
putting things to rights, but never take pains to keep 
them so. 

" By the way I wonder whether these note-book scribblings 
of mine are likely to have a good or bad effect on my 
English. I read so little, and of that little so much is 
French or German, that I can hardly expect to have any 
notion of the run of a good English sentence." 

Books that have helped me 

" 9 Sept. '87. This is the title of a pleasant short article 
by Dr A. Jessopp in the Fo?-u?n for September '87. He seems 
to have made permanent friends among books. How few of 
us have ! There are lots of books which have at one time or 
another seemed so precious to me that I could not help 
treasuring them up. Some of these (though not many) I have 
ceased to care about. I remember when volumes of Manning's 
Sermons seemed to raise me to a higher region. Now it would 
be a task for me to read these sermons, as they have become 
to me merely eloquent. I had for some years (from 16 to 21) 
a genuine friendship for Macaulay, and was never tired of his 
society ; but I soon threw him off and now rarely look at 
him. Soon after the Macaulay phase Carlyle had great in- 
fluence with me. I read him still with delight when I do 
read him, but that is not often. Helps I got a great deal 
from some five years ago. I read the Companions of my 
Solitude again and was surprised to find how much I owed 
to Helps ; but though I could read him I don't. Perhaps 
the most lasting friendships I have formed are with Charles 
Lamb and Matthew Arnold. My wife and I have spent 



Favourite Authors 1 1 1 

many happy hours together reading Lamb. I know no 
greater pleasure than delighting in a book in common with 
one's alter ego, reading it aloud and talking about it after." 

Carlyle, Newman, Maurice 

"15. 11. '87. I have lately been reading R. H. Hutton's 
Essays On some Modern Guides. Carlyle, Newman, and 
Maurice are to my mind the men best worth studying — and 
for this reason : they are all in earnest. They have faced the 
great question of existence — ' are we the outcome of certain 
laws and tendencies, or is there behind all these laws and 
tendencies a Mind which our minds can in part conceive of, 
because they were Created in the image of It? ' Now the great 
mass of people virtually put the questions unanswered aside. 
There has been an outcry from time to time about ' the in- 
crease of infidelity,' but the man who carefully answers the 
question, Is there a God ? even by denial is far higher in the 
scale of rational beings than the man who virtually says, ' I 
really don't know, and it does not much matter. I'm not 
going to bother myself to think whether there is or not.' 

" Now all these three men subordinated everything to the 
thought of the supreme direction of God. No doubt their 
conceptions of God were very different. It was perhaps im- 
possible for anyone so totally devoid of humility as Carlyle 
to be a Christian. God was in his eyes the Schoolmaster 
of the Universe whose first care was for discipline. Carlyle 
himself was l the good boy ' of the school who was never 
weary of preaching to his comrades that they would ' catch 
it.'. But he was * terribly in earnest.' He believed in law 
and order, and never lost sight of discipline." 

" Maurice had taken to heart, perhaps more than any other 
man of this century, ' God is love,' and, as in all these men 
truth is ' touched by emotion,' he devoted his life to pro- 
claiming the conviction. 



ii2 R. H. Quick 

" Newman has felt that there were only two existences that 
concerned him, God and himself; and his life has been a 
long and strenuous preparation for eternity. 

" All these have been influenced throughout life by their 
faith, and belief in the true cure for all the lowering influences 
which act upon us. 

" It seems to me that Christians who squabble about forms 
of Christianity are like people in the following fable. In an 
eastern city the plague was raging. A great doctor came 
from a foreign country and gave the doctors of the city an 
elixir which was a specific for the plague. The doctors ap- 
proved it and announced that they were going to administer 
it, but unfortunately, instead of setting to work to dispense 
it, they took to quarrelling and wrangling about the shape 
of the glass in which the elixir should be given, and every 
one to hear them would have thought that the virtue lay not 
in the elixir, but the glass.' 

Compayre 

" 26 Jan. '88. Compayre" seems to belong to the same 
class of minds that I do (I, by the way, am very low down in 
it for want of energy and power of rapid work), a class without 
any power of original thought, but with intelligent interest in 
the thoughts of others. 

"Writers of this kind have an extremely useful function. 
They are always trying to. get at the best of what has been 
thought and done, and though they do not originate thoughts, 
they do a good deal for thought, for they co-ordinate and 
connect the independent thoughts of more original people. 
The great problems present themselves to all active minds (a 
very small number when all told), and these work out what 
seem to them solutions or approximate solutions. These the 
intellectual brokers, so to speak, bring together and thus find 
out, if not the solution, at least the direction in which the 
solu^on is to be looked for. The best broker (collector 



Compayre 1 1 3 

would be a better metaphor) takes the thoughts of others 
into his mind and produces a homogeneous whole. But it 
is easier, and in some ways more satisfactory, to give other 
people's thoughts in their own language, so we collectors 
abound in quotations. But quotations make a book patchy, 
and moreover, unless the quotation is very short indeed, your 
author probably says a little less or a little more than you 
want him to say. It's always pleasanter to listen to a man 
explaining himself in his own words than in borrowed words. 
This may seem a reason for giving the actual words of the 
first thinker, but the reader is in fact in communication, not 
with him, but with the collector, and he does not like that 
communication to be broken by an excerpt from someone 
else. At least this is the only way in which I can account 
for the undoubted fact that extracts or quotations of more 
than a line or two long are unpopular. Compayre quotes far 
too much." 

Qua? itch's Catalogue 

" 26 Aug. '%%. Various reflections come into my head when 
I look through a catalogue like this. One is, how important 
when a start is made in any branch of study and inquiry to 
learn and fix in one's mind what are the best authorities. The 
ordinary books on the subject are pretty sure to be nothing 
but authorities and water, and the water spoils them. A 
lecturer may be very useful in orienting beginners. Without 
such orientation one often, after some years, discovers a book 
that would have been immensely serviceable had one known 
of it earlier. When I wrote Educational Reformers I had never 
heard of Barnard's American Journal of Education. It was a 
long time before I knew of Lowndes or Brunet, and there 
are probably many great helpers to educational study I don't 
know of now. 

"To come to old books, one of their great recommenda- 
tions is that they must be few in number. 'The time is 
1 



ii4 R. H. Quick 

short.' One's stock of energy is small. One's waste both 
of time and energy is great. It is a grand thing then to 
apply one's time and energy where it will act ' at mechanical 
advantage.' When one works in a small subject all the work 
tells, but most subjects, as one's knowledge increases, spread 
out like the circles made by a stone thrown into a pond, till 
the area is no longer defined. Happily a young man is not 
struck by the fact that life is limited and the field of know- 
ledge unlimited. The young man looks forward to the time 
when he will have mastered this subject or that. The elderly 
man is always running up against the barrier ' Never.' " 

Cookery in Schools 

11 30 Sept. '87. I am one of those people who see things 
soon but don't see them strongly enough. In 1865, when 
I was in Whitechapel, I started the idea of teaching the girls 
in the national school cooking and selling cheap dinners ; but 
nobody took up my notion or thought anything of it. I was 
not energetic or initiatory enough to start it single-handed. 
No doubt, too, I was hampered by the system at Whitehall, 
though the Code did not exist. Now, twenty- two years later, 
the cookery plan is coming to the front." 

Sensitiveness 

"I suppose the infliction of physical pain is a thing to 
which one soon gets accustomed, but without practice the 
act has a most unpleasant effect upon the giver. To-day 
Bertha and I took out the big dog here (Haslemere) for a 
walk. We had hardly started, the dog in tremendous spirits, 
when he seized on a small white Malay, and seemed likely 
to be the death of it. A man caught hold of the big dog, 
and as it did not let go the little dog, he suggested to me 
to hit our dog on the nose. In great alarm I did so vigor- 
ously with the handle of my umbrella, and it was wonderful 



Sensitiveness 115 

how much punishment the dog took before he let go. But 
having to do this upset me astonishingly, and some time after- 
wards, when I tried to read a book, the scene came back, 
stopped my reading and filled me with a very distressing 
feeling that I could not shake off. I don't think I have ever 
had a horrid impression thus forced on me except once, when 
I had to take a corpse out of the water." 



I cannot better conclude this fragmentary biography, which 
has the one merit of being mainly an autobiography, than by 
reprinting some obituary notices - 1 that were at my request con- 
tributed by those of his friends who knew him most intimately, 
and were best qualified to treat respectively of that portion of 
his life with which they were connected. They appeared in 
a special Supplement of the Journal of Education, April 1, 
1891. 

I have not ventured to curtail or alter them, and the reader 
must pardon a few unavoidable repetitions. 

Clerical Work. Bv the Rev. J. Llewelyn Dames 

Last October, Hebert Quick reminded me that we had known 
each other for 36 years. He came to me from Cambridge — I do 
not remember through what introduction — as an additional unpaid 
curate when I had charge of the parish of St Mark's, Whitechapel. 
That he was interested by the clerical work in that populous and 
not admired locality, was proved afterwards. On my removal to 
Christ Church, St MaryJebone, he went with me, and we found 
there a quarter and a population which might be compared with 
what we had known in Whitechapel. He did not, however, stay 
long in Marylebone. Our acquaintance had quickly ripened into 
an affectionate friendship, and we were — as we continued to be to 
the last — in close sympathy on theological and ecclesiastical and 
social questions ; but throughout his whole life, after being for a 
certain time in a place, he was impelled by an apparently consti- 

1 Those by Dr H. M. Butler and Mr John Russell have already been 
quoted. 



1 1 6 R. H. Quick 

tutional craving to make a change. His friends could not under- 
stand this craving, in one so faithful in his affections and apparently 
demanding so little from life. After a few years 1 interval he re- 
turned to St Mark's, Whitechapel, as assistant curate to Mr R. E. 
Bartlett, recently Bampton Lecturer, who became a valued friend 
of his ; and there he had as fellow-curate Mr Voysey, who in- 
terested him greatly. His chief clerical work in after years was at 
Sedbergh, to the vicarage of which place he was appointed by 
Trinity College in 1883. I n a f ew years 1 time he insisted on re- 
signing this post, chiefly that he might devote all his energies to 
' psedagogy ' ; but in the churchyard of the well-loved Yorkshire 
parish it was my privilege last Saturday to say the words of hope 
over his remains, whilst the attendance at the funeral showed what 
respect and affection he had won amongst his parishioners. 

There was no one who had a better right to win the affections 
of his fellow-men of any class. I never knew a man more un- 
worldly, more simple, more quietly indifferent to money or praise. 
Such a man was sure to like children, and to attract them, as 
Quick did in an eminent degree. He had not a telling manner as 
a preacher, but his sermons were always fresh and interesting and 
serious, and he could preach extempore with more success than I 
should have expected. And he had the advantage — no small one 
for a clergyman in these days — of being musical. In parochial 
work his sympathies were always with the poor,- but they were 
guarded by a manly respect for the independence of the poorest 
and a desire for their moral and intellectual elevation. I was sorry 
when he gave up his parish — though he did not altogether give up 
the performance of clerical duty — because I was convinced that his 
spiritual work, pure, loving, and deeply reverent, had a peculiar 
excellence and value, such as he himself was not likely adequately 
to appreciate. 



J. Ll. D. 



Harrow. By a Colleague 



s ' 



Mr Quick's Harrow life, both as a boy and as a master, was a 
short one, but long enough to make him for all time the most loyal 
and devoted of Harrovians. As a boy he was contemporary with 
Dr Butler, and during Dr Butler's headmastership he returned to 



Harrow 117 

his old school as a master on the Modern Side, which post he held 
from January, 1870, until ill-health obliged him to retire in the 
summer of 1874. 

In teaching Harrow boys, it cannot be said that he was alto- 
gether successful ; his best work, perhaps, was done in the elements 
of German, a language in which he felt thoroughly at home. He 
enjoyed teaching small boys better than older ones, who, perhaps, 
sometimes showed a little impatience of the elaborateness and 
what seemed to them the slowness of his methods. The fact is 
that, as in his own composition, so in teaching, he was fastidious, 
never quite able to accept as necessary the imperfections of im- 
mature work, or to press on further until he was satisfied that all 
possible difficulties had been cleared up for every boy in his class. 
With the younger boys he had many ingenious devices, which his 
own experience or that of others had suggested, for varying the 
monotony of learning. Though his most successful work was in 
the lower part of the Modern Side, some at least of the older and 
more thoughtful boys have told the present writer that they enjoyed 
their hours in school with Mr Quick more than any others. Of all 
that savoured, or seemed to savour, of v/3pis or brutality or injustice, 
he was absolutely intolerant, and the indignation which would flash 
out at anything of the kind gained him the nickname of i Old 
Fireworks,' — a most appropriate title ; for, when once the cause 
was removed, the fire of his wrath soon burnt itself out, and left no 
smouldering resentment behind. 

But it was his fellow-masters, rather than the boys, who felt, on 
his leaving Harrow, that the loss was irreparable. It is not too 
much to say that those who had had the good fortune to live under 
the same roof with him felt as they might have done if the genial 
warmth and steady brightness of the sun had been taken from 
them. 

He was the most faithful, the most unselfish, the most sympa- 
thetic of friends. Nothing which had an interest for those he 
loved was too trivial to interest him. No time was too long, no 
pains too great, for him to spend in helping a friend through a 
difficulty, in setting right an injustice, or getting rid of an abuse. 
And if hope ever ' springs eternal ' in any human breast, it cer- 
tainly did in his. It was hope which grew naturally out of a deep 
and serene trust in God. Although he had been at Harrow so 



n8 R. H. Quick 

short a time, hardly any one else could have been missed so much. 
What a well-known figure it was at Harrow — the slouch hat, the 
big overcoat with its collar, as often as not, half up and half down, 
the pockets perhaps gaping with a load of curious books which he 
had just picked up at some bookstall in town ; the large brown 
beard, the kind brown eyes, and the characteristic nod or shower 
of nods ever ready to greet an acquaintance, rich or poor, big or 
little. 

He was very different from everybody about him, and had had 
a larger experience than most men when he came to Harrow. 
One and another of his colleagues, who were new to their work, 
owed it to him that they learnt to look at schoolmastering with 
more open eyes and wider interest. He was always ready and 
delighted to discuss, over his pipe, the details and the principles of 
his profession ; and his humour, never in the least unkind, and an 
endless fund of stories, which he told capitally, made him the most 
interesting and delightful of companions. At a masters 1 meeting 
he would sometimes, instead of speaking, put his thoughts into the 
form of an essay, which he w r ould print and circulate. Among 
other improvements which Harrow owes to him is the Blue Book, 
which gives in a single line the school history of each boy — initials, 
school title, house, tutor, age, form, the form he took on coming, 
and the date of coming, and all his school distinctions . He was 
the first to discover that it was possible to call over the school 
anywhere except in the very inconvenient Fourth Form Room, and 
invented a circulating ^ Bill ' through the old Speech Room. The 
School Tercentenary fell in the year 187 r, and Mr Quick was one 
of its most active secretaries. Indeed, to the work which he did in 
this cause, in that and in the following years, may perhaps be 
attributed in great measure the terrible headaches which finally 
made life as a Harrow^ master impossible for him. 

G. H. Hallam. 

Redhill 

It was just three weeks before his death that I went down to 
Redhill to spend the day with my old friend. Since he moved to 
Earlswood Cottage, a term has never passed without at least one 



Red/till 1 1 9 

such visit. The programme for the day was nearly always the 
same, and, if I set down* my recollection of our last day's inter- 
course, I shall present a true, though incomplete, sketch of 
Mr Quick as I knew him after he had withdrawn from active 
life. Much, indeed — and what to me is the most precious part — 
can only be adumbrated : the mutual converse and counsel on our 
private concerns, business, family, and deeper matters. I never 
knew a man so absolutely without concealments or reticencies of 
any kind. This transparency of character was due to a singularly 
childlike and trustful, but by no means a shallow or effusive, nature. 
He felt deeply and thought profoundly, but he never preached or 
gushed. And confidence provoked confidence. His sympathies 
were wide, and he was the most tolerant of men. Himself a 
sincere churchman, he admired Mr Matthew Arnold no less than 
Mr Spurgeon. Only where he suspected quackery and imposture, 
whether orthodox or unorthodox, he had no mercy. Fools he 
suffered gladly, and, like the Vicar of Wakefield, his doors were 
besieged by what I may term pedagogic beggars — men of all 
nationalities, wanting information, introductions, or employment. 
None was sent empty away. He had correspondents all over the 
world, and to America he acted as a sort of proxenos. 

On arriving I went straight to his study. The room was lined 
all round with book-shelves reaching to the ceiling, and tables, 
chairs, and writing-desk were strewn with books and pamphlets. 
Books were the one luxury in which he indulged himself (except 
unstinted charity), and, wherever he took up his abode, the house 
from attic to cellar was soon converted into a library. Any new 
book bearing on his own subject he ordered as a matter of course, 
and a rare book, even when he was bon ftere de famille, he could 
never resist. First editions of- Mulcaster, Elyot, Comenius, and 
of less-known authors, Brinsley, Mary Astell, and Hoole, were 
among his choicest treasures. The nucleus of this library was a 
bequest from his old friend Joseph Payne, and he told me that it 
was his intention to bequeath it to some public body. 

He showed me an article he had on the stocks for his friend 
Dr Murray Butler's new magazine. I don't think he had christened 
it, but the subject was the embarrassments of a literary man — how 
to deal with ever-accumulating materials, periodicals, pamphlets, 
note-books, commonplace books. He quoted to me a business 



120 R. H. Quick 

maxim of his father's, always to get rid of useless or depreciated 
stock, and never to keep it on the chance of a rise in the market, 
or a possible demand for it. The article was, in fact, a chapter of 
autobiography, and I hope it will be published, if only as a frag- 
ment. 

Lying open on his writing-table was the official report of the 
Berlin Conference, and we fell at once to discussing the project of 
reform in Germany, and the analogous movement in England. 
He expressed his full sympathy with Mr Welldon's motion at 
Oxford, but doubted whether it would lead to any immediate 
result. "It's so hard, 11 he said, "to convince men that the school 
in which they were bred is not the best of all possible schools ; 
and, when they point to themselves as a proof of its excellence, it 
is hard to answer them without being rude. So we shall still jog 
on in dem alteti Schlendrian" This led us to the question of the 
training of teachers, the educational reform which of all others he 
had most at heart, and he listened eagerly to what I had to tell 
him about the prospects of the Registration Bill. He reminded 
me of a phrase of Paulsen's, Die RecJite der Lehrerbildung gcgen 
die Gelehrtenbildung, as embodying the principle of Mr Acland^ 
Bill, and gave instances of the loss our schools suffer because 
headmasters as a rule are scholars and not schoolmen. "M. is 
reckoned, and justly reckoned, one of the best headmasters in 
England, and as a Sixth Form teacher he is admirable. But when 
he used occasionally to take a low form, he was all at sea, and it 
was only the majesty which hedges a headmaster that prevented a 
regular breakdown. How can such a man pretend to train a young 
master in the way he should go ? I remember, once, when it was 
proposed at a masters 1 meeting to shorten first school from an hour 
and a quarter to one hour, N. protested because it would be im- 
possible for him to hear his repetition in the time. The whole 
form, it appeared, did nothing for an hour and a quarter except 
during the couple of minutes that each boy was put on. Yet these 
are the men who think that the history of teaching is only of 
antiquarian interest, and that a study of method is needed only for 
the elementary teacher. 11 

He was greatly cheered both by the reviews and by the sale of 
the second edition of Educational Reformers. More copies had 
been sold in six months than of the first edition in twenty years — I 



Redhill 121 

mean, of course, in England. In America the book had sold by 
the thousand, though he had not received a penny for it, and he 
was righteously indignant with one American firm which, in spite 
of his protests, had announced a simple reprint as a new and 
revised edition. 

" Do you know,' 1 he asked me, " my Harrow nickname ? I 
never heard it till Hallam told me the other day I was known as 
Old Fireworks. Not a bad one, was it? 11 I agreed, suggesting as 
an alternative more fitting for his riper years Don Quixote. " Yes, 11 
he said, " IVe tilted at windmills in my day, but I think I've also 
pricked one or two windbags. 11 An abuse, whether in Church, in 
State, or in School, was to him like a red rag ; he rushed at it 
utterly regardless of odds or personal risks. Just before, he had 
been telling me of a case of apparent miscarriage of justice which 
he had taken up. A traveller in Messrs Blackie 1 ^ employment was 
tried for incendiarism, convicted, and sentenced to a year's im- 
prisonment with hard labour. The man bore an unimpeachable 
character, and all who knew him were convinced that his ex- 
planation of the suspicious circumstances which led to his arrest 
and conviction was true. Mr Quick left no stone unturned to get 
him off. He obtained an interview with Mr Justice Stephen, and 
convinced him that there was at least a prima facie case for a new 
trial. He appealed to the Home Office, and, failing to get any 
redress from Mr Matthews, he was preparing to draw up a state- 
ment of the case and send it to every Member of Parliament. 
Like Archdeacon Denison, he was ever a fighter, but with all his 
pugnacity he never lost his keen sense of the humorous, and so his 
friends were never bored when he fought his battles over. The 
personal element was by no means absent, and he would have 
satisfied Dr Johnson's standard as a good hater ; but there was not 
a touch of bitterness or malevolence in his hatred, still less, if 
possible, a trace of self-assertion or self-glorification. He had his 
quarrels, literary, scholastic, and parochial, but he was too genial 
and kindly ever to make a real enemy. 

All the best stories against himself were told by himself. For 
instance, he told me how his bile had been roused by an article in 
the Spectator defending the Education Department, which he 
imagined to have been contributed by a well-known inspector, and 
had written off to one of the editors with whom he was acquainted; 



122 R. H. Quick 

to protest against the admission of such an ex parte statement, and 
how the editor had replied: 'Why are you always sniffing out 
officialism? As a matter of fact, /wrote the article. 1 He told me 
how an editor of the old Journal of Education had appealed to 
him for an article, and on his consenting, had replied : ' I am 
much obliged to you for your kind promise of help, but I should be 
still more grateful if you could persuade your colleague, Mr Farrar, 
to contribute. 1 Most men would have been offended, Mr Quick 
was simply tickled. He told me how, when he was thinking of 
resigning the living of Sedbergh, he had written to the Master and 
Fellows of Trinity College, announcing his intention and express- 
ing his desire to suit their convenience by placing his resignation 
in their hands before the Long, but adding that he wished first that 
a small matter that was pending between him and the Charity 
Commissioners should be settled first, and how the Trinity authori- 
ties had answered: 'If you mean to wait till the C. C. have settled 
anything, your decease is likely to precede your resignation. 1 In 
this case, however, the story was hardly against himself, for, he 
added: "The next time I wrote to the C. C, I took care to quote 
the Trinity letter. 11 

After luncheon always came a walk, generally in the direction 
of Reigate, by the chalk ridge from which we could see the Surrey 
hills and his old home at Guildford. That day we walked through 
Gatton Park, and once and again he stopped me to remark on 
some effect of light and shade, or trees that 'laid their dark arms 
about the fields. 1 Tennyson and Wordsworth were his favourite 
poets, and, though his verbal memory was not remarkable, he 
knew a great part of Tennyson by heart. In our walks, as a rule, 
we left shop behind, and the talk was mainly of books and men. 
Of English writers, those who had influenced him most were 
Carlyle, Maurice, Newman, and Matthew Arnold. Mr Arnold he 
knew pretty intimately when both were living at Harrow, and often 
quoted his aculeate w r ords. Any article by Professor Seeley in a 
newspaper or review was cut out and carefully preserved. Mr James 
Ward was another object of his hero-worship, and he spoke en- 
thusiastically of the Cambridge lectures to teachers, regretting that 
the author refused to publish them and seemed inclined to desert 
applied psychology for pure philosophy. I observe that a friendly 
notice in the School Guardian speaks of Mr Quick as an empiricist 



Red hill 123 

rather than a psychologist, and, as his book might reasonably 
convey this impression, I -may digress for a moment to correct 
what is, at any rate, a misleading nomenclature. It is quite true 
that he pursued the historical method, and had little faith in a 
Priori reasonings. It is true also that he was an experimentalist. 
All his life through, he was observing the minds of children, his 
own or others, and recording his observations. A whole shelf in 
his study is full of diaries containing notes of cases. But it is not 
true that he thought lightly of the formal study of psychology. He 
was never tired of denouncing the false opposition between theory 
and practice, and insisting that empiricism is itself a theory, though 
a very shallow one. In later years he came to value more highly 
than he once did the works of men like Ribot and Guyau, Rosmini 
and Froebel, Bain and Sully, and he spoke of himself as an 6\pL- 
/jiaOr)^, one who was humbly endeavouring to overtake the new 
developments of the science of mind. 

To resume my day's record, we reached home in time for tea, — 
his liking for tea was another trait he shared with Dr Johnson, — 
and after tea he insisted on accompanying me to the station. I 
asked how his health had been of late, and he answered cheerily, 
"Never so free from headaches since I was at Harrow." 11 He spoke 
of future plans, and we discussed the respective advantages of 
Rugby, Bedford and Sedbergh, and other towns. He was a firm 
believer in day-schools, and intended to settle wherever was the 
best school that admitted day-boys. His life was wrapped up in 
his children, whom of late he taught almost entirely himself. " I 
should," he said, "have no hesitation in choosing X., but Y. (the 
headmaster) is getting on in years, and by the time the boy is old 
enough for school I fear he will have resigned or been made a 
bishop, and who knows but that another Z. may succeed him?" 
These were almost the last words I remember. Dis aliter visum. 
A week after came the news of the fatal stroke. No man was less 
prepared to die; no man was better prepared for death. He had 
lived ever in the eye of his great taskmaster ; his whole life had 
been a praeparatio mortis. The task was done, and we who are 
left mourning can yet repeat ■ the sweetest canticle Nunc dimittis, 
when a man hath obtained worthy ends and expectations.' 

F. S. 



124 R. H. Quick 



Last days. By Professor Seeley 

Quick came down to pay me a short visit on Friday, February 
20th. I had not seen him for several months, but I had lately 
received from him a copy of the new edition of his Educational 
Reformers. The book had been known to me not only from the 
time of its first publication, but from an earlier time still, when it 
was in an embryonic state. Before it met with such signal success, 
first in America and afterwards here too, I had been struck with 
the plan of it. To make a book on education readable, particularly 
if you must needs make it also sober and rational, is a problem 
which most publishers consider insoluble. But after all, some of 
those great men whom we are never tired of reading about can be 
put into connection with educational subjects. What Milton, or 
Locke, or Rousseau thought and said will interest us, even if it be 
on the subject of education. It was therefore a happy thought to 
arrange in a series the educational systems that have been broached 
by great thinkers, adding some biographical and bibliographical 
information, as well as the intelligent reflections of an editor who 
is himself an educational specialist. This, then, is the solution of 
the problem. We owe it to Quick, and he lived long enough to 
see his book, which he did not expect, I am sure, when he wrote it, 
to outlast a single bookselling season, reprinted after twenty years 
and selling briskly. Meanwhile, his knowledge of the subject had 
deepened, and his judgment had ripened. His second edition is 
an incomparably more satisfactory book than his first. In a letter 
to him I welcomed it with an enthusiasm which seemed to take 
him by surprise. He answered me, refusing absolutely to believe 
that he had the literary talents I ascribed to him. All he would 
ever claim for himself, he said, was that he was " quite determined 
not to write nonsense." Then he went on to inquire about my own 
literary plans, and said he should like to read some proofs I had by 
me, and help me with his opinion and advice. So it was agreed 
that he should pay me a visit here at Cambridge. He was to stay 
four days, from Friday to Tuesday, during which time he would 
read my proofs. He came, looking very well, and professing to 
feel in better health than for many years. He came, but he stayed 
more than four days, and he did not read my proofs ! He brought 



Last days T2 5 

' Friendship's Garland ' with him, which he had read in the train, 
and in our midnight chat over the fire — the last we ever had — he 
talked of it with great glee, and he talked of Matthew Arnold 
himself, whom he had known at Harrow, and of whom he always 
loved to speak. On the Saturday morning, I remember, Mr 
Churton Collins called to get my signature to his memorial in 
favour of Italian. I introduced Quick to him, and two signatures 
were obtained where only one had been expected. After lunch I 
proposed a walk. " Yes, 11 he said, " he should like a real good 
walk ; he so seldom got a walk. 11 We set out, but scarcely a 
hundred paces from my door, and before we had reached the 
1 Fitzwilliam, 1 came the fatal seizure. He sank down helpless and 
paralysed, and we had extreme difficulty in lifting him into a 
hansom in order to bring him home. 

He lay in my house for sixteen days. Dr Bradbury, who 
treated the case with the most careful skill, pronounced that he 
had been struck with spinal apoplexy. The brain was not affected, 
and his mind was perfectly clear. At first he despaired of himself. 
He said, " I suppose I shall die to-morrow. 11 That his family were 
far away, and would not see him again, was his grief; but Quick 
was one of those who trust in God. I was able, however, to tell 
him from Dr Bradbury that, though of course he had suffered a 
heavy blow, yet, as the hemorrhage seemed to be ceasing, so 
long as he remained quiet in bed, there was. no actual danger. 
Dr Bradbury, indeed, soon changed his mind ; he came upon the 
track of other diseases, and soon began to regard the paralysis as 
but the smaller half of the case. Meanwhile, however, Quick had 
been reassured, and for a full week after the first seizure I could 
notice that he expected to recover, and looked forward to leaving 
his bed again. He was now not merely resigned, but cheerful and 
sanguine, long after I had ceased to be so. His thoughts returned 
to their former channel. When I offered to read to him, he asked 
for ' Friendship^ Garland, 1 and I read him at different times two 
chapters of it, which he seemed to enjoy heartily, much more 
heartily than I could. 

But, as the second week advanced, he seemed to drift away 
beyond my knowledge. Now when I spoke to him he took little 
notice, answered very feebly, and in words which seemed to betray 
that his mind wandered. There was no clear interval between the 



126 R. H. Quick 

time when he expected to recover and the time when consciousness 
began to fail him. 

On the evening of March 9th, I was summoned by the nurse, 
who had become aware of a sudden change in him. His brother, 
too, who had arrived from London early in his illness, and watched 
him assiduously, was hurriedly summoned. I saw the last struggle, 
which did not last long and was not severe ; he seemed quite 
unconscious. His brother arrived a few minutes too late. 

I little thought that it would fall to me to furnish a death-bed 
to dear old Quick, and to see him die. I had known him many 
years, and our intercourse had always been pleasant and cordial, 
but seldom very close. We were neither schoolfellows nor college 
friends, nor had we ever been colleagues or associated in any task. 
Our acquaintance began on the top of an Italian diligence, as we 
crossed the Apennines to Florence. Both of us were making our 
first visit to Florence, so that on the same day on which we made 
acquaintance with each other we also made acquaintance with 
Brunelleschi's dome and Giotto's bell-tower. Afterwards, in 1867, 
I travelled with him for about six weeks in Southern Germany. 
Since those days our meetings have been shorter, but we have 
watched each other's course with constant sympathy. Each has 
read with interest what the other wrote, but our lines of thought 
and study were for the most part different. 

I never knew a man of happier disposition and temper. He 
was all candour and kindliness. Intercourse with him was always 
easy, and yet never insipid. He had a singular modesty, which he 
contrived to combine with perfect firmness of judgment. His re- 
ligion he had learnt from Frederick Maurice. I have heard him 
say that he had been disappointed to find how little that noble and 
consoling doctrine had penetrated our people. But it satisfied him, 
for indeed it answered well to the inborn piety of his nature, to that 
strong family feeling which everyone could note in him who heard 
him speak of his parents, or saw him in his own happy home, or 
marked his behaviour to the children of his friends. 

J. R. S. 



Elementary Education 127 

ELEMENTARY EDUCATION 

Debate in House of Commons on 10 June, 1879 

" The intelligent public and intelligent Secretary for Educa- 
tion have got hold of the notion that the school boards in 
general and the London School Board in particular are 
spending too much money, and that this must be altered. 
Nobody asks what standard do you go by ? Not at all. 
Nobody has any notion what the school ought to do. The 
consequence is that the only difference ' public opinion ' 
can find in schools is that some schools cost more than others. 
Lord George Hamilton says the London School Board pay 
more than the market price for teachers, and this must be 
stopped. If teachers were as much alike as so many pots of 
Keiller's marmalade there would be some sense in talking 
about the market price ; but this ridiculous cry for cheapness 
irrespective of quality is no more good political economy than 
it is good sense. The root of the whole mischief of these 
debates is that nobody has a worthy conception of education. 
' Education ' in the mind of the public is learning first of all the 
three R's, and then it becomes ' 2, good education ' if you can 
carry the pupil on into grammar, history and geography ; and a 
first-rate education if you go so far as the classical languages. 
So it seems that many of our elementary schools give ' too 
good an education ' to the children of the poor, and this is an 
injury to the poor shopkeeper who has in part to pay for it. 
The Pall Mall Gazette, whose folly has the redeeming quality 
of simplicity, says that the education in board schools should 
be like diet provided for paupers. Let the children learn the 
three R's in them, and then if parents want apple-pie in the 
shape of grammar, history, &c. let them get it and pay for it as 
best they can." 



128 R. H. Quick 



Waste of time in primary schools 

" 30. 10. 79. Max Miiller in advocating phonetic spelling 
says that it would save time in schools, and what, he says, is 
so valuable as time ? I should feel inclined to add, ' And 
what so little valued ? ' In our primary schools the children's 
time is wasted, often consciously, sometimes even intentionally. 
The usual excuse for the Government standards is that th°v 
prescribe a minimum, and the schools should not be contented 
with this ; but of course the whole strength of the school is 
thrown into fulfilling the Government requirement, and if it 
1 passes ' all the children it is considered to have reached its 
ideal. The necessary consequence is no effort is made to 
utilise the time of children who are sure to pass. Nobody 
knows what more to do with them. A child who learns fast 
and consumes (so to speak) a year's provision of teaching in 
six months is a positive nuisance. Wilkinson at Harrow, 
speaking of the children's writing, told me he didn't wish the 
children to learn fast, as the parents only took them away 
the sooner. The effect on the cleverer children may be easily 
imagined. They have next to nothing to do, and what can 
be worse for them than the tedium of the schoolroom in which 
their energies are not duly employed ? " 

St Marfs School, Brighton 

"19 Jan. 1880. I went yesterday to St Mary's Infant 
School, Brighton. Miss Soames had mentioned it to me as a 
particularly good school. The mistress, she said, was remark- 
ably efficient. In the log book I was shown Inspectors' reports, 
Government Inspectors' reports, very short indeed but very com- 
plimentary ; diocesan Inspector quite ecstatic in his praises — 
everything is excellent, the mistress ' is indeed a good mistress.' 
So here we have a school coming up pretty closely to the ideal 
of an infant school according to popular notions. The mistress 
naturally enough thought she had nearly, if not quite, reached 



Education by the Code 129 

the highest point attainable. She was ' very ambitious/ I was 
told, and actually got her- eldest children to read in the second 
standard books. One would think to hear these teachers and 
managers that the Code with its six standards was the work, 
not of the Privy Council, but of the Almighty, and that the 
capacities of children had been formed with constant reference 
to it. We outsiders are very apt to think everything absurd that 
does not fall in with our notions and to denounce what we 
think wrong in the existing system without considering the 
weak points of what we would substitute, if indeed we take the 
trouble to ask ourselves what we really want. My fulmi nations 
then may be no index to the true system, but I am convinced 
there can be no education worthy of the name whilst instruction 
is made the only object in schools, and whilst the instruction 
given is dominated by the stiff mechanism of the Code. At 
present children are thought of merely with reference to the 
Inspectors' examination. In a similar way horses in a racing 
stable are thought of only with reference to racing, hounds 
with reference to hunting, pointers with reference to shooting, 
&c. These animals receive for the most part extremely kind 
treatment and there springs up between them and those who 
have the care of them a fondness which is quite independent of 
their professional connection. Bat though the fondness of the 
trainers for their animals has an effect here and there on them 
which cannot be traced to the thought of racing or shooting or 
what not, the whole system of training is framed with reference 
to those pursuits, and if the horses do well on the racecourse, if 
the hounds hunt well, and the pointers point well, the trainers 
are considered good trainers ; if their animals fail, the trainers 
are sent about their business. Now the Code has produced a 
state of things analogous to this in the schoolroom.. It would 
be very absurd to say that the way children are treated was 
governed entirely by the Code. The human connection which 
naturally exists between the young and benevolent grown-up 
people leads to much in the schoolroom which would remain 

K 



130 R. H. Quick 

unaltered if the Code were to be repealed. But the teachers 
do in the main think of children as beings whom they are to 
' pass ' in certain standards, just as the stud-groom thinks of 
the racecourse. I suppose from his recent speech in the Lords 
Mr Lowe (now Lord something or other) would say, 'Yes, this 
is just what I intended. All the talk about education is mere 
wind. You can't educate ; you have no real power over the 
circumstances which do indeed educate, and if you had, you 
are not intelligent enough to make good use of it. So don't 
trouble vourself about ' education ' — let that take care of 
itself. What you can do is to give children instruction in 
certain arts which will be of great service to them in after life 
and which they never would acquire without the schoolmaster. 
Therefore I wish to make the schoolmaster a trainer in the 
three R's : when he has taught children to read, write and 
cipher, he has done all he can for them.' For my part I do 
not wish to return the intolerance of men like Mr Lowe and 
Mr Justice Stephen with equal intolerance. I am aware that 
' educationists ' are apt to say much when they mean little, and 
that education is not so entirely in our hands as we often seem 
to suppose. But when every allowance has been made for 
exaggerations of this kind we cannot entirely get rid of the fact 
that the way in which children are treated and employed has 
an influence upon them, and if they are brought up with one 
kind of treatment and employment they will be for life different 
to what they would have been if brought up with another 
treatment and another employment. If this is allowed it must 
be allowed further that we ought to consider not merely the 
special skill to be acquired by the employments in which 
we engage children, but also the general effect of those em- 
ployments and of our regulations about them. When a horse 
wins the Derby his stud-groom's ideal has been absolutely 
attained. When a pointer behaves when the master is out 
shooting entirely to his master's satisfaction there can have 
been nothing defective in his training. But we cannot measure 



Education by the Code 131 

the training of children so perfectly by the regularity of their 
'passes.' Perhaps it will be said, 'If all the children pass 
they must have been well taught ; if they have been well taught 
you have brought the best educational influence to bear on 
them that you can obtain.' I wish I could think so, but I 
can't ; and if I had been in doubt my visit of yesterday would 
have convinced me that teaching maybe very good if estimated 
by passes, and not good at all if one considers its general effect. 
" The teacher was a young woman of about three or four 
and twenty — \ery bright, active in manner and energetic in her 
way of carrying on the school. She had a remarkable hold on 
the children's attention, and though quick, was not in the least 
harsh. But she saw in every child a being who could or 
could not do certain things specified in the Code. And she 
was ' ambitious ' and wanted to shew that she could get the 
infants to read in second standard books. My impression is 
that the infants in that school went through more ' grind ' 
than is got out of any form at Harrow. They have three hours 
in the morning and two-and-a-half in the afternoon, and the 
same lessons, the everlasting three R's, both morning and 
afternoon. Now in this incessant grind one of two things 
must happen. The most probable of the two is that the 
teacher (a fortiori the pupil- teacher) will be unable to control 
the child's attention except for the few minutes in each hour 
when she addresses herself to that child. The rest of the time 
the child is under an irksome restraint with no employment for 
mind and body. The influence of such schooling must be 
stupefying in the last degree. But sometimes a really clever 
teacher may command the children's attention. Miss X. did 
so yesterday in a wonderful way. Of course the children 
were anxious to do their best in my presence, but I am sure 
Miss X. always fixes their attention for a great part of the 
lesson. In this case the children must be worked too hard. 
It cannot be good for little children to stand or sit still and 
work hard at dull work for so many hours a day. Such over- 



132 R. H. Qtiick 

exertion must I should think be followed by reaction. The 
first lesson that I heard was a reading lesson of the highest 
class — children of seven or slightly under, twenty-three in 
number. They read from a Reader published by Blackie. 
Worse rubbish could hardly have been provided for them. 
They read two stories. The first was about a little girl who 
had a drunken father. The drunken father asked the child 
why she loved him, and the child said, ' Because mother told 
me when she died.' This answer turned the drunkard into a 
sober man. The connection of the two, which does not lie on 
the surface, is unexplained. The other story had equally little 
connection with anything in the world beyond the folly of the 
writer. A gentleman offers to buy a box of matches for a 
penny if the boy will get him change. The boy goes off with 
the shilling and does not return. In the evening another boy 
comes to the gentleman's house and gives him fourpence, and 
says that as his brother was bringing him change he was run 
over and had his legs broken and lost all the change but 
fourpence, &c. &c. It seems this class sometimes read J. S. 
Laurie's Technical Reader, but as reading is the thing thought 
of, these books are used as the five-finger exercises are used in 
piano playing : nobody cares for anything beyond the me- 
chanical exercises. I asked the teacher whether the children 
understood what they read about. She said she thought they 
did, but asked no questions about meaning, and absurdly made 
them read through a lot of questions — Where did the gentle- 
man live? Where is Edinburgh? &c. without requiring any 
answers. The reading though fairly fluent was except in two 
or three cases atrocious. Almost all the children dropped 
their voices a minor third after every few words without the 
smallest care for sense or even for stops. I never heard anything 
more ridiculous, yet Miss X. seemed to think it all right. 
I'm sure I don't know how children are to be got to read properly 
when every word is a puzzle which taxes all their powers, but 
this horrible sing-song could not possibly lead up to good 



Education by the Code 133 

reading. I should think it would be better to take the words 
of the story at first as disconnected words in column and when 
these were mastered go to the story. The teacher should then 
read the story clause by clause before the children attempted 
it. Anyhow I am sure that Miss X.'s plan must be wrong. 
Then came the spelling. In this case the children answered in 
turns. The spelling was very good, and much time and 
attention must have been given to it. But the climax was 
in the sums. Miss X. dictated sums such as add eight 
thousand and forty, two thousand three hundred and seventy- 
six, &c. &c, and similar subtraction sums, and the children 
took them down quite correctly and then worked them with 
equal correctness. She then went round, glanced at the 
answers (A and B sums were set, by the way, to prevent 
copying) and marked them as right or wrong. Then she said, 
' All who had both sums right stand up.' Only three children 
remained sitting. Miss X. smiled triumphantly, and well 
she might. No inexperienced person can have a notion what 
a feat this was. I confess I was quite appalled by it, not 
so much as a display of the skill of the teacher as of the 
capacities of the children. Here were a set of children, not 
over seven years old and with no hereditary advantages, going 
through a hard grind like this with eagerness and success. 
If the pace could be kept up they would have the powers 
of Sir Isaac Newton by the time they came of age. And yet 
these are the children who will spend four or five years more 
over the three R's, will at the end of that time have no great 
power of mastering the contents of a book, and no desire 
whatever to look into a book of any kind, and will remain for 
life as narrow and dull and intellectually feeble as the British 
workman or servant girl almost invariably is. This must 
surely be attributable, in part at least, to the deadening effect 
of the ordinary school grind. 'Yes, but you must have grind,' 
says an objector; ' you can't make everything pleasant in 
the schoolroom, and it is of not the slightest use trying.' I 



134 -R* H- Quick 

answer, ' I daresay you can't make everything pleasant in the 
schoolroom, and more than this, I daresay it would be a bad 
thing to make everything pleasant if you could.' But allowing 
that there must or should be some grind in the schoolroom, I 
maintain that it is the greatest mistake possible to have grind, 
grind, grind and nothing else. But according to our present 
system the three R's are the sole object of our school course, 
and while they are pursued as the be-all and end-all of school, 
instruction can be nothing but grind. The mind of the young 
is naturally occupied about persons, animals and things, and by 
degrees the young acquire knowledge or get ideas on these 
subjects. But grown people find that knowledge or ideas 
cannot be put into circulation, so to say, unless we have power 
over certain symbols. Words are such symbols, and words are 
acquired by children up to a certain point without effort in 
connection with the things or notions they stand for. But 
though spoken language comes thus naturally, and may be left 
to take care of itself, printed language and written language 
come only with teaching. So again counting, such as is wanted 
for the ordinary life of a child, would come pretty readily, but 
ciphering or summing, which is really the use of certain 
symbols, would not come without teaching. We find then 
that the knowledge of things will to some extent come without 
teaching, but the art of using symbols will not come. We 
therefore concentrate our teaching on the symbols and let the 
things take care of themselves. But it is the things, in a broad 
sense including living things, that interest children, and when 
you disconnect the symbols and grind away at them, keep 
the children an hour a day saying tables and make it one of 
the main facts of existence that knock is spelt k-n-o-c-k and 
gnat g-n-a-t, you are really making the children munch chaff 
and husks, you are letting the mill grind away with nothing in 
it. The old complaint which gave rise to Pope's satire : — 

1 Thus then since man from beast by words is known, 
Words are man's province, words we teach alone, 1 



Learning by rote 135 

was not more justified by the old Latin and Greek grammar 
grind in the secondary schools than it is by the devotion to 
the three R's in the primary school. 

" Before you can approach a good system or even take the 
right road for one. you must remember that the minds of 
children are affected, not by symbols, but by things. Milton, 
with all his respect for learning, saw that the study of words 
might easily be made too much of: 'Though a linguist should 
pride himself to have all the tongues that Babel cleft the world 
into, yet if he have not studied solid things in them as well 
as the words in the lexicons, he were nothing so much to be 
esteemed a learned man as any yeoman or tradesman com- 
pletely versed in his mother dialect only.' In a similar way 
these poor children, when they have been ground in the 
three R's so successfully that at seven years old they are fit 
to pass in the second standard, may be far worse educated 
than other children who do not know their letters but have 
learnt to observe what is worth observing, to reverence what 
they ought to look up to, and love what they ought to love. 
The main difference in human beings is a difference in their 
interests, and next to that is perhaps a difference in their 
mental associations. But our school-mistresses find nothing 
about interests or mental associations in the Code, and the 
children will not be required to pass in them, so such irrelevant 
matters may be neglected. . . . 

" I have just been in to take Miss X. a picture-roll 
(Jarrold's Picture-roll of Natural History). It is a warm 
summer day. The infants come at 9, and then it was 11.30, 
yet when I knocked at the door I heard them in full grind. 
The highest class, on which Miss X. concentrates her 
attention (and with reason, for they only have to pass the 
Inspector and he comes in about a fortnight), were engaged 
in simultaneous spelling from the reading books. They were 
working at a column of words, taking one at a time, and going 
on in this way, ' b-r-o-u-g-h-t, brought ! b-r-o-u-g-h-t, brought ! ' 



136 R. H. Quick 

till Miss X. said ' Next word,' when they went on to the 
next. Such a grim determined grind I hardly ever witnessed. 
And these poor children had been got — I don't know how, 
certainly not by harshness, harshness would never do it — to 
go in for the grind themselves. Poor little dears, they kept 
bawling these ugly sounds with all the concentration and 
determination to succeed of a man working for a wrangler- 
ship. Though it is not an hour ago I can hardly believe 
my own memory, for the children kept on bawling away not 
only when Miss X. kept an eye on them, but just the 
same when she entered into conversation with me. I told 
her about the roll I had brought ; she took it and opened 
it, and we looked at the pictures in such a way that most of 
the children could have seen them too : yet even this did 
not distract them. They kept on steadily with the grind, as 
if they were little clocks which could not help going till they 
ran down. I can now well understand that they get over- 
excited about the examination. It seems you can stimulate 
the minds of children and of girls in a way which a teacher 
of boys cannot understand and can hardly believe. But what 
comes of all Miss X.'s too successful exertions? She told me 
with a sigh that she was just going to lose fifty of her best 
children. She should like to go on with them, she said, 
they were getting so interesting. But she sees them go back 
when they get to the boys' school and the girls' school. The 
master and mistress tell her they like to have her children, 
for they can safely leave them to bad teachers : children who 
come from her are quite safe for the second standard. After 
the holidays these children will be the fag-end of the upper 
school, and will be left to the instruction of a boy or girl of 
fifteen. If this time were simply wasted, this might not be 
such a bad thing for them, but just think of the feelings of 
the poor children themselves ! They now take a great pride 
in their own performances, and know that Governess takes 
a pride in them. Next quarter they will feel that they are 



Letter to Lord Spencer 137 

nowhere, are not learning anything, are not cared for in any- 
way, and are merely being kept quiet by a pupil-teacher. 
This discouragement thus given them may effectually put 
a stop to the desire now so strong in them to ' get on.' 
Then, again, how fearfully irksome must be the restraint of 
having to spend five or six hours every day in the school- 
room without being allowed either to work or to play. Poor 
children ! They will doubtless pass the second standard with 
the impetus Miss X. has given them, but the pupil-teacher 
may find a year no longer time than is necessary to prepare 
them for Standard 3." 

Reading in Elementary Schools 

Letter to Lord Spencer, 26 July, 1880 

" Having a professional interest in all educational subjects, 
I have carefully followed the recent debates and discussions 
about the Code ; but, like most professional men, I do not 
value public opinion very highly on a subject about which 
the public are ignorant, and instead of writing to the Times, 
I presume on our former official connection, slight as it was, 
and address myself directly to your lordship. On one point 
at least I heartily agree with Lord Sherbrooke. In the late 
debate he said that much more should be made of reading 
in elementary education than of writing or arithmetic. It is 
indeed very unfortunate that this triple division should have 
been invented, and no more satisfactory reason can be found 
for it than the natural law discovered by the Germans, ' all 
good things are three.' In point of fact almost all the in- 
struction children get about language and the meaning of 
words, both separately and in connection, comes under the 
head of reading, and this should obviously count for more 
than one-third of the total instruction given. But at present 
only a third of the grant can be claimed for reading, and it 
would seem that instruction in reading is less successful than 



138 R. H. Quick 

in the other subjects. From an article in Friday's Times I 
learn that ' all the Inspectors, with scarcely an exception, 
deplore the mechanical facility devoid of intelligence which 
lends a delusive show of excellence to the percentages in 
this subject.' If this is so, I have no doubt you are con- 
templating such alterations in the Code as seem likely to 
bring about an improvement, and I therefore venture as an 
old schoolmaster and school-manager to propose a small 
change which would, as I believe, tend greatly to improve 
the reading. 

" I was present last week at the inspection of a girls' school 
at Brighton, and I found that in testing the reading by far 
the greater part of the Inspector's time and attention were 
spent upon the doubtful cases. Those girls who seemed able 
to read easily and answer a simple question were ' passed ' 
in a few seconds, but where there seemed any difficulty the 
Inspector most patiently examined the child till he could 
make up his mind on which side of the line he ought to 
place her. Something similar happens at every reading-lesson 
throughout the year. Children, when they are sure to ' pass,' 
no longer interest the teacher. The Code offers no induce- 
ment to seek any further excellence, so the backward children 
alone are cared for, and the teacher's energy is spent, not in 
getting any one to read well, but in getting all to read 
passably. 

" There would be a great change for the better if some 
reward were offered for excellence beyond the reward gained 
by mediocrity. If the inspector gave a special mark of ex- 
cellence wherever the reading was not only fluent but shewed 
understanding of the passage and the answers to the ques- 
tions shewed intelligence, this would be an inducement to 
the teachers to attend to the brighter children as well as to 
the dull and backward, and the quality of the reading would, 
as I believe, rapidly improve. A small additional grant for 
each ' excellent ' reader would probably prove quite sufficient 



A Debate in Commons 139 

stimulus, as both teacher and pupil would be in fact rewarded 
by the distinction. 

" After many years' experience in the schoolroom, I am well 
aware that any change is apt to bring with it unforeseen incon- 
veniences ; but in the present instance some change seems to 
me necessary, and what I have suggested is not a measure 
likely to throw the rest of the machinery out of gear. One 
disadvantage it would have certainly. The introduction of 
another class of doubtful cases would add to the difficulty 
of the inspection and to the time spent upon it ; but the 
inspectors who are anxious to improve the reading would 
probably not complain of this. 

" One cause of bad reading in elementary schools is the 
very poor supply of books. The Code says ' every class 
ought to have two or three sets of reading books.' This 
really fixes the number at two, and two school Readers do 
not afford a good supply of reading for a whole year. 

" The Readers are no doubt much better than they used to 
be, but it seems a pity that the books which are the classics 
of childhood, Aisofi's Fables, Gulliver's Travels, Robinson 
Crusoe, are at present literally unknown in elementary schools. 
I once mentioned to Lord George Hamilton how immensely 
the reading would be improved by enabling children to borrow 
amusing books from a school library. He entirely agreed with 
me, but said such books could not be purchased out of the 
rates. But if the need of such a library were admitted, books 
would be very commonly given ; and if the inspectors were 
directed to inquire and report on such school libraries as 
they found, the mere inquiry would call the attention of the 
managers to this very valuable aid in literary instruction." 

Educational Debate in the House of Commons ■ 

" 3 Aug. '80. In to-day's Times is the report of the debate 
on Education Estimates. These debates are sad reading for 
anyone who knows what education is. The speakers shew the 



140 R. H. Quick 

most complete ignorance, and, worse than ignorance, error in 
their fundamental conception. I am very sorry that Mimdella 
has not more insight into things, but no doubt those who have 
not had what is considered ' a good education ' suppose that 
such an education gives much more knowledge than it really 
does give. Such people feel how valuable a knowledge of 
chemistry, or of physiology, or of English literature would be 
to them, and they regret that they did not go to a school 
where these things were taught. If they had been to such a 
school they would have found out that whatever was taught 
there, these subjects were not learned. Before there can be 
proper learning there must be a mind capable of teaching, 
a mind capable of learning, and the desire of teaching and 
the desire of learning. But in most schools some one or 
more of these requisites is wanting. Poor Mundella does 
not understand this, so he wants to have all sorts of things 
' taught ' in the school. The great debate now is about the 
' special subjects,' physiology, etc. The late Government 
wish to limit the teaching of special subjects to the 5th and 
6th Standards, but in point of fact most children leave after 
passing the 4th Standard, and Mr Mundella thinks it would 
be ' a misfortune for children to go to work after the 4th 
Standard without a knowledge of the simple facts of science, 
of history, or the laws of health.' He does not reflect that 
the simple facts of science, etc. etc. cannot be known by the 
children of the poor at the age of ten, and this is no more 
a misfortune than that they are not five feet high. Unfortu- 
nately they can learn some words which schoolmasters call 
simple facts of science, of history, or of the laws of health, 
but fee fo fum might just as well be described as a simple 
fact of science or a law of health. There is something pa- 
thetic in Mundella's high valuation of school knowledge. He 
was, he said, disposed to attribute a much higher value to 
what was called a ' smattering ' of knowledge than many 
others were. And then he quoted Mr Bates, of Amazonian 



A Debate in Commons 141 

celebrity, who got a smattering of botany at school and so 
became interested in the subject. If an occasional good 
teacher could be found and an occasional good pupil, this 
would not justify the employment of a great number of 
teachers who could not teach for children who can't learn. 
" Sir John Lubbock made a speech replete with the same 
misconception of education. He gave the result of some in- 
quiries he had made of the children at a school in Lambeth. 
The notion of consulting the children is not a bad one, but 
as a scientific man Sir J. Lubbock might have been expected 
to investigate more carefully. He asked the children in the 
two higher standards, 229 in number, which subject they 
liked best. As these children could none of them have 
learnt all the subjects, they may perhaps be considered some- 
what doubtful witnesses as to their comparative attractions ; 
but according to their answers 2 liked grammar best, 11 geog- 
raphy, 31 arithmetic, 38 history, and 147 elementary science. 
He then went on to say how bright the children looked when 
rapidly questioned by the master. For my part I am inclined 
to think that teaching about things is likely to be more in- 
teresting than teaching about ' the completion of the predi- 
cate,' but Sir J. L.'s experiment goes for very little. He 
had lighted on a master who took interest in that lesson 
and so managed to interest the children. Voila tout! If 
the master had liked teaching arithmetic and had not liked 
teaching elementary science, the numbers would have been 
reversed. Mr Yorke, the Conservative member for E. Glou- 
cestershire, was of opinion that, ' if a high class of education 
(whatever that may be) were given at the expense of the 
State, a sort of communistic principle would be introduced 
which might ultimately lead to consequences that could not 
now be foreseen.' A speech of this sort is rather a joke in 
the mouth of a man who is certainly very rich, and quite as 
certainly would not scruple to bring up his sons at our 
public schools and Universities, which, if not maintained by 



142 R. H. Quick 

the State, are maintained to a great extent out of endowments 
left for the poor." 

Aptitudes of Children 

"2. 7. 80. Brighton. We shall never do much in the way 
of educating the children of the poor sjd long as we think of 
nothing but the three R's, with or without useful information, 
and entirely neglect the nature and aptitudes of the learners. 

" To-day I have been watching some children from the 
window. A house is building opposite and a quantity of 
rubbish has been shovelled out on to the pavement to be 
carted away. In to-day's rubbish there have been bits of 
wood mixed up, I suppose from the house which stood on the 
same spot. About seven o'clock two young Arabs, one about 
nine, the other about six, set to work to fill a bag with these 
pieces. They collected with great eagerness. I observed that 
the elder of the two not only took delight in collecting for the 
bag, but also in helping the workmen, which he did by handing 
up large pieces of brick-work to be put in the cart. At times 
other boys stopped for a bit and helped in the collecting, 
throwing the pieces they found to the small child with the bag. 
A newspaper boy spent some time this way when he ought to 
have been distributing the papers which were under his arm. 
iVbout nine o'clock the elder lad went off (to school?) and the 
little one continued the search alone. He must have been 
working keenly for nearly or quite three hours on a stretch 
when he first began to shew signs of weariness and took to 
playing with other children. 

" This delight in collecting combined with the pleasure they 
take in helping their elders is very strong in children." 

A Code Conference 

" 20 April, '81. I am on my way to the Code Conference. 
How hard it is to get at collective wisdom on any subject ! 
The Code itself seems in parts so ill-drawn that any ordinary 



A Code Conference 143 

teacher could sit down and put on paper something better 
as fast as he could write.; but I suppose the Code is so bad 
because it represents Collective folly, which is much more 
capable of expression than collective wisdom. 

" What strikes me very forcibly in all meetings for debate is 
that a man's influence is not at all proportioned to his wisdom, 
but to his fondness for hearing his own voice and partly on the 
nature of that voice, whether it is a commanding bass or a 
feeble treble. Nobody is inclined to believe in the wisdom of 
a man with a squeaky voice. 

" When anything is to be drawn up or done the prepared 
man always comes to the fore, since work of this kind cannot 
be done properly off-hand, and twenty or thirty men often do 
badly and with great difficulty what any one of them could do 
better and more easily by himself. 

" When I got to the Committee Room this morning, some 
twenty men were discussing MacCarthy's draft of petition. 
Now twenty men can't speak with one voice. MacCarthy of 
course had expressed his own notions and then everybody who 
was fond of speaking tried to express his notion, and so con- 
fusion arose, which ended in some cases in MacCarthy's words 
being left, in others in some queer amalgam expressing 
nobody's idea (sometimes no idea at all) being substituted. 

" This over, Mr Morse, Dr Barnes of Leeds and I found 
ourselves a sub-committee to advise the Department what 
history and languages to prescribe, and how they should 
be taught. Now to draw up a plan good enough for anything 
would have been a work of time, and we ought to have settled 
on some principles before making suggestions of details, but 
there was no time for principles and no room on the paper we 
had to fill for anything but a few scrappy sentences. Oddly 
enough the collective wisdom of the nation expressed by my 
Lords declares what is to be taught and gives a sort of scheme 
of graduated knowledge, but it will allow itself only a column, 
taking up less than the sixth of a page, for each subject; so it 



144 ^' H- Quick 

was held we could not offer any scheme that could not be 
squeezed into the regulation limits. 

" We were an odd trio. First in order of importance (though 
not Chairman) was Dr Barnes. He was a big, noisy man, with 
a somewhat defiant air of laying down the law. He had 
considerable fluency in expression, which gives a man a great 
pull on such occasions. Without having any very clear insight 
into anything, he thought he saw through everything ; but he 
was not stupid, though apt to go off the point. The Chairman, 
Mr Morse, was a thoroughly good soul, with a great wish to 
agree with everybody and to turn for light in any direction, 
but not prepared to throw much light on anything himself. 
His merits as a Chairman were however very great. He kept 
us fairly well to the point, formulated things rapidly and neatly 
and wrote them down in a capital hand. Finally there was 
myself, not much of a man for a Committee, not ready by any 
means, and neither leading nor wishing to lead. We spent the 
morning over history." 

A Code is not a pedagogic gospel 

" 7 May, '8i. I have been obliged to give up MacCarthy's 
Conference. I think he is entirely on the wrong tack. He 
says in a letter to me, ' Surely good teaching can only be looked 
for from good standards, and with regard to good teachers, good 
standards are the directest method of getting them.' To this 
letter I have written the following reply — ' My dear MacCarthy, 
When one differs from a man it is a satisfaction to know 
the exact point of difference, and your letter makes that quite 
plain. I do not think that the best way to get good teachers is 
to improve the standards of examination of children. This 
notion seems to me (if you will forgive my saying so) an 
exaggeration of an exaggeration. There is a very exaggerated 
estimate current as to the good to be got out of examinations. 
In the old Universities the notion was that a man was educated 



A Code Conference 145 

not merely by studying certain subjects but by residence under 
peculiar conditions and influences. The London University 
took up another line. The old Universities had started 
examinations, the object of which was to see that men had 
not wasted their time while in residence. These examinations 
got turned into races for money prizes, and by the time the 
London University was founded people began to think that the 
Universities were simply places where men were prepared for 
examinations. The London University took up the line — 
Have good examinations and the rest will come right of itself. 
If a man knows this and that, he is an educated man, no 
matter how he learned it. We will find out what he has 
learned, and by the action of economic laws the best method 
of learning and teaching is sure to become the common one. — 
The results have not, I think, justified this belief in the power 
of examinations to produce the right teaching and the right 
learning. 

" * But you take up the same notion as the founders of 
the London University, and you carry it a good deal further. 
They trusted to examinations which classified the students and 
ascertained which were very good in the subject, which simply 
good and which passable. But you expect everything from an 
examination which takes no account whatever of excellence, 
and must be so arranged that the ordinary child of poor 
parents can pass it without any great strain. 

" • Granting (which I do not grant) that a good examination 
is all that we need to secure good teaching, it by no means 
follows that we can secure good teaching by an examination 
which merely fixes an irreducible minimum and so fixes it that 
the ordinary child may pass. What would become of University 
teaching if all men went out in the Poll ? No ; you have 
worked hard at a subject of great interest and great importance, 
for there must, I suppose, be standards, and it is far better 
that these should be rational than irrational ; but you have not 
unnaturally come, as I think, to attach far too much importance 



146 R. H. Quick 

to standards. The life of education does not consist in the 
list of subjects nor in the stages into which each subject is 
divided. It consists in a great measure in the action of the 
intelligent mind of the teacher on the minds of the taught, 
awakening their intelligence and rendering them capable of 
thinking and acting for themselves.' " 

The Moloch of payment by results 

" C. A., who was here yesterday, gave anything but a 
good account of the schools in his district. The strain on 
the teachers is very great and everything is done with the 
sole object of getting a high percentage of passes. In conse- 
quence of the high pressure the teachers get very brutal and 
knock the children about. In one case sums were given out 
and it was announced that everyone who had a mistake in the 
answer would be caned, and this was carried out. When one 
meets with things of this kind one is surprised to find how 
stupid or savage an animal man is ; but much is due to the 
incessant grind, which develops all his worse feelings. 

" The London School Board provides Lending Libraries 
and sends boxes of books to their schools in turn, but the 
teachers do all they can to prevent the children getting books 
that interest them ; they say it takes them off their home-work. 
So the key of the box is very commonly lost." 

Pestalozzi 

" Before Pestalozzi the whole Continent had made the 
mistake of confounding education with instruction in literature. 
'Education' had been, at the best, a good training in the 
ancient authors, at the worst, a mere drill in sounds. Pesta- 
lozzi was no. scholar, and when he set about 'educating' he 
attempted to rear, not scholars, but men and women. There 
was something, after all, in this change of object. No doubt 
his work would have been pronounced a terrible failure by the 



Workhouse Children 147 

Joint Board or by H. M. Inspectors. He would not have passed 
50 per cent., and his Managers would have dismissed him for 
earning so poor a grant. But, if left to himself, he would have 
turned out men and women capable of thinking clearly, of feeling 
rightly, and of reverencing all that is worthy of reverence. These 
are extra subjects not at present included in our curriculum." 

Workhouse Children 

"27 June, '81. To-day I had a talk with Mr D., the master 
of the Union. He is strong against the teaching the children 
get in our schools. The children now go to the Stoke schools 
till they have passed in Standard 3. He says that when the 
boys were taught in the Workhouse they had an industrial 
education, and they were so much in request that he had more 
applications than he could supply. Now, he says, nobody 
wants the boys. 

" It is very hard to appraise the complaints of a man like 
D. at their right value. First there is the general tendency 
to find fault, and this applies especially to educational matters, 
in which everyone thinks himself qualified to be a judge. 
Then there is the tendency to disparage instruction which the 
speaker never had himself. But allowing for all this I can't 
help thinking our Code is not well adapted to the wants of the 
poor. If a boy or girl works on to Standard 6, they can't 
make a livelihood at all, says D. : nobody wants that sort of 
knowledge. The poor child who is brought up in the Work- 
house has this against him : nobody wants him. He must be 
really useful in some way or other, or he must stay in the 
Workhouse. To be useful he must be able to do work of some 
kind or other at a cheaper rate than anyone else." 

The Sedbergh National School 

" 7 July, 'Si,. I am now likely to have some insight into 
rural life. In the School the point that has most struck me is 
the tremendous waste of time. I came across a reading lesson 



148 R. H. Quick 

of the 1 st Standard. A boy of about twelve had a reading 
book as the children had and kept shouting word by word, 
while the children shouted after him ; but I observed that few 
of the children looked at their books. I asked them to point 
in their books to the word ' crab.' Two or three only were on 
the spot. Most of the others pointed to ' pretty/ that being 
the longest word. To go on shouting words in this way for 
half-an-hour can't do children much good. 

" I questioned the highest standard, some intelligent-looking 
lads, as follows : — 

Q. How long will the holidays last ? 

A. A moonth. 

Q. How many days are there in a month? 

AA. 31, 30, 28, 28, &c. 

Q. How many days are there in June ? 

A. 30. 

Q. Isn't June a month? 

A. Yes. 

Q. But some said 31 days, some 28. Which were right ? 

A. 28, 28. 

Q. But June has 30. Now I'm afraid the sharpest boy 
must be bad and staying at home. I know what the sharp 
boy would have said when I asked how many days there were 
in a month. Can't anybody think what he would have said ? 

A. 28, 28. 

Q. No, he wouldn't, for you see June, which is a month, 
has 30, July 31, &c. The sharp boy would have said, What 
sort of a month do you mean ? And suppose I had answered 
a calendar month, what would he have said then? 

A. 31, &c. (By one boy) He'd have asked which of the 
months ? 

Q. Yes, that's right. If the very sharp boy is away, there 
is, it seems, a boy here quite sharp enough, &c. 

In this way one gets boys to use their wits, and they were 
getting all alive when the master said it was time to close." 



Religions teaching 149 



Religious Teaching in Elementary Schools 

"16 Oct. '83. The Churchmen here (Sedbergh) say that 
they keep up the National School simply for the sake of the 
religious teaching, which they would not get in so good a way 
if the school became a Board School. What the religious 
teaching now is they do not inquire : that is the business of the 
clergy. 

" As yet I have not attended to this part of the teach- 
ing, but have kept to the Friday service in church, to which 
however few children come : their parents think it ' a waste 
of time.' 

" To-day I went to the school during the Bible lesson, 
which is supposed to last fifty minutes ; but I discovered 
that only a few children are taught for the whole of that 
time. The Government Code requires the child to be under 
instruction for at least two hours. The grand defect of all 
this machinery work is that in requiring so and so, though 
that minimum may be secured, everything beyond it is sacri- 
ficed. The schoolmaster takes care that the children are 
in school two hours. But, if they are, he is satisfied ; so, 
though the school is supposed to begin at nine, the children 
come in as they like during the scripture hour, and those 
who are late not only learn little or nothing, but also disturb 
the others and prevent their learning. ... It is quite open to 
doubt whether the perfunctory teaching of Scripture has much 
good effect on the children. 

" 20 Oct. '83. Since writing the above I have had a piece 
of experience which I have sent as a ' Note ' to the Journal of 
Education. I heard Miss M. teaching a hymn. The children 
(Standard 2) were sing-songing it in the usual elementary school 
fashion. I asked the mistress, ' Did they know the meaning 
of the words?' 'No, Sir, they don't learn meanings in the 
hymns.' I went to the master and said, ' Miss M. tells me the 



150 R. H. Quick 

children do not learn the meaning of the hymns.' ' He does 
not require the meanings of the hymns,' said D., ' only of 
the Catechism.' ' He? who is he?' 'The Inspector.' " 

Sunday-school Teaching 

" 19. 11. 83. Sunday-school teaching seems for the most 
part a mere wind-bag. The boys come and either ' say,' or 
more generally do not ' say,' a set of words called the Collect. 
The teacher hears this and then puts questions and talks, but 
the questions are not answered and the talk is not listened 
to. The boys don't seem to think they have anything to 
do except to sit there and think of nothing. Yesterday the 
Collect was, ' O God, whose blessed Son was manifested.' Of 
course the boys had never heard the words ' manifested,' 
' manifest,' before. They were big lads, and I tried to get 
some conception of what was meant into their minds. I 
then asked if our Lord was alive before He was born at 
Bethlehem. No answer. I at length prodded at a big lad 
till I somewhat woke him up. The fire kindled, and at length 
he spake with his tongue, ' No, He warn't alive afore He was 
born ! ' The truth is, the religious teaching given to our 
young people is not good enough to interest them, so their 
mind does not take it in, and they remember at best words 
only. Such words as 'manifestation,' 'incarnation' have to 
them absolutely no meaning." 

Interest the one thing needful 

"22 April, '85. Tamworth. I had to address the children 
at Sunday-school on Sunday, but did not know how to set 
about it. In the day-school a certain number of statements 
are communicated to them in such a way that they can par- 
tially reproduce them as far as words go, but their interest has 
never' been awakened, and I fancy their minds never work 
on anything connected with religion. There are cases, no 
doubt, where some unsuspected working is going on, but I 



Interest 151 

am convinced that in the majority of children there are no 
ideas, and consequently* no interest connected with their re- 
ligious teaching. 

" The religious and intellectual training of the poor will, I 
suppose, be understood some day. It seems to me the first 
thing necessary for understanding it will be to throw to the 
winds all that we have done hitherto and to start afresh. 

" You can't train the mind unless the mind is at work. 
Unless interest is aroused, the mind (of the young at least) 
does not and cannot work. 

" If these two axioms, as I consider them, be applied to 
the teaching and learning in elementary schools, it will be 
found that out of the five hours a day or 25 hours a week 
spent in school, hardly an hour is given to mental training. 
And what is the outcome of the teachings ? When the result 
is considered successful, the boy has learnt to read mechani- 
cally but with pure indifference to the subject-matter, perhaps 
with no consciousness of it. He has learnt to write, a very 
great gain no doubt. He has learnt to ' do sums.' Un- 
fortunately he not only has no insight whatever into the 
principles of calculation, but he has spent so much time in 
working rules without understanding that he cannot manage 
the simplest computation in ordinary life unless it is like a 
' sum in the book,' and he can seldom work a long sum 
of any kind fast, neatly, and accurately. He can spell fairly 
well, but though he has learnt to spell many words which 
are not used in his out-of-school life, he has the very vaguest 
conception, if any at all, what those words mean, and often 
a little examination will shew that he has wrong notions about 
them. As to grammar he has no notion at all, but has ac- 
quired a sort of knack or habit of guessing right when he is 
asked what part of speech a word is. This scholastic art is 
not a very valuable one, and it requires constant practice to 
keep it up. If history and geography have been taught, the 
boy can give the dates of accession of kings and queens of 



152 R. H. Quick 

England with principal events in their reigns, he can tell the 
county towns of England, &c. &c. ; but, though he may be 
proud of his learning, he has no interest in any character or 
event in history, or in any place beyond his dwelling-place, 
and his so-called knowledge is merely verbal knowledge, which 
will soon vanish and leave no trace behind. The children 
are at school about 1000 hours a-year, so they receive in 
their school course four or five thousand hours' teaching, 
and this is the outcome in favourable instances ! Meantime 
the children have been stunted in their intellectual growth by 
the dull monotony they have gone through." 

A Hastings Board School 

" 8 April, '86. I went to-day with Mr Arnold to a school of 
which Mr W. Evans is headmaster. About 240 boys, all lively 
and doing good work, I think. The chief things I noted 
were : (1 ) Mr Evans gives all boys a right to appeal from 
an assistant to himself. (2) For punishment he gives cubing 
numbers. The numbers get higher and higher, as the num- 
ber of offences gets higher. Assistants can set them, but 
must have them recorded by the headmaster. (3) I asked 
Mr Evans what Reading Books he used. He said, ' One by 
our Inspector.' [It was published by Griffith and Farran ; 
no name of author given.] 'I don't like it, but it's politic 
to use it.' " 

Elementary Education in England worked by machinery 

"An American observer 1 has distinguished between the 
English and Swiss systems, and says that the Swiss have 
developed their system from the standpoint of the child, the 
English from the standpoint of the State. We ask, ' How, 
for our own advantage and the State's, can the child be made 
to consume least and produce most?' They ask, ' How, for 

1 Elvira Carver. 



Workhouse Schools 153 

the child's own sake, can his mind be best developed and his 
character be best perfected?' I don't think even Mr Lowe 
had any clear conception of what he wanted to do, except 
to get as much as possible for the State's money, and to 
gauge this in the most definite way. But the attempt accu- 
rately to gauge results and pay for them in strict arithmetical 
ratio has been the ruin of our elementary education. By slow 
degrees some definite perception of this has been arrived at 
by the two or three officials who have the power to make 
changes. Few of our ministers know, few care, about educa- 
tion, and they are mere figure-heads, while men like Fitch 
and Sharpe are the rudder. Unfortunately Fitch and Sharpe 
have now worked the machine so long that they think we 
could not do without it ; so they simply attempt to tinker it 
and make it less mechanical. Their last attempt was well 
meant, but I am told and can easily believe it has proved 
a failure. The head Inspector settles whether a school is 
' excellent,' ' good,' or ' fair,' or does not deserve any merit 
grant. This enormously increases the power of the Inspector, 
and it was thought he would use this power to mitigate the 
mechanical working of the Code ; but after all it is so much 
easier to decide by percentages than by general impressions 
or anything else, that the teachers find as a matter of fact 
they have no chance of an ' excellent ' without a high per- 
centage, and the machine grinds on at the same high pressure 
as before." 

Workhouse Schools 

" Much has been made of Spinoza's ' Our business is not 
to praise or blame, but to understand.' Spinoza is not re- 
sponsible, as he was not laying down a general law. It is 
our business sometimes to praise, sometimes to blame ; but it 
is our business first to understand, and very often thorough 
understanding brings so many qualifications that it seems to 



154 R. H. Quick 

take all heartiness out of both our censure and our praise. 
Lately I have had a talk with the parish doctor about Work- 
house children. He thought there was some taint in the 
pauper children, and that no good could be expected of 
them. When they were put out in life they always gravi- 
tated back to the Workhouse. Did the doctor ' understand ' ? 
I think not. He was right, no doubt, about the phenomena, 
and very sad they are. No doubt, too, the children of degraded 
parents shew a stronger tendency to the vices of their parents 
than you would find in children who come from a respectable 
class. But does this taint account for everything? On the 
contrary, I think that all the phenomena might be explained 
apart from heredity. The Guardians would gladly send the 
children to the National School, but the Managers of the 
National School object. Consequently some 40 children of 
all ages varying from 3 to 14 or 15 are taught by a single 
mistress, who ex vi termini must be a very inferior mistress. 
School in the Workhouse, as I have learnt by inspection, is 
an unintelligent, dull, dismal grind, and no relaxations or 
amusements of any kind are provided out of school. Such 
dulness is quite sufficient cause to account for the subsequent 
failures in life." 

Redhill Boys'' School 

" 1 1. 5. 8&. I have said somewhere that the true rule is not to 
say we must neither praise nor blame, but understand : but we 
should be careful not to praise or blame before understanding. 

"I therefore want to understand our elementary school 
system, but I can't. I have just met Mr Gordon, who is 
vicar, and virtually runs these schools in order to keep out 
a board school. I point out to him that a vast amount of 
the children's time is wasted. ' So it is in all schools,' he says. 
'You can't keep children always at work. They are resting 
in school or getting into habits of discipline, &c. &c. They 
don't waste all their time, for they get to do certain things.' 



Redhill 155 

" I wish to put down here as colourless an account as pos- 
sible of what I found when I visited the schools to-day. 

" Drawing-lesson was going on. At one end of the room 
41 boys were sitting round a cone which they were supposed 
to be copying. The teacher walked round and looked at 
the attempts, but most of the boys did not do anything at 
all but whisper to each other. Next were 32 boys under 
another teacher, drawing a cube under similar conditions. 
Next, Standards 1 and 2 (39 and 26) were under one young 
woman and were also drawing, or supposed to be. I raised 
the objection that the teacher had too large a number (65) 
to attend to, but the headmaster held that this was neces- 
sary, as the two standards had to be examined together. 
Standard 1 drew on slates, Standard 2 on paper. I ob- 
served that some of Standard 1 had only little scraps of 
pencil. The headmaster said the teacher could not possibly 
be expected to attend to such minutiae, it would take up all 
her time. I am anxious to avoid the frame of mind of the 
man who goes on denouncing what is, without suggesting how 
things might be made better. About this dnwing, I say it is 
fearfully dull. ' Of course,' says Mr Gordon, ' there is a dull 
part to everything. It is a fine discipline to have to tackle 
the dull part of a subject and get through it. This is the 
alphabet of drawing. The children will be able to draw 
when they have been put through it.' But can't they get 
the power in any other way? What is the use if, in teaching 
the alphabet, you so disgust the pupil with the subject that 
he never afterwards will touch it? And the waste of time? 
If a young woman has 65 children to teach and no method 
but that of dodging about and looking at the paper or slate 
of each separately, this means dreary waste and loss which 
seems to me quite indefensible." 



156 R. H. Quick 



A Diocesan Inspector 

" 30 Oct. '84. I have just assisted at a Diocesan Inspector's 
examination, the worst form conceivable. K. began with 
Standard 1, which he examined at some length on Adam and 
Eve. Answering good. In N. T. answering only moderate. 
The other children had meanwhile something to write on slates, 
but soon finished this and were restless. The children then 
said Psalm c. from the Bible version, and K. preached about 
it. Then the hymn ' Awake my soul.' K. questioned in this 
fashion: 'Sloth means idleness, doesn't it?' With the next 
division he preached for ten minutes on thanksgiving. Then 
Abraham. ' Abraham was able to resist temptation, wasn't he? ' 
If the examiner did not positively prompt the answer he wanted, 
the answer was mostly wrong : ' You ask God to forgive you 

as you forgive ? ' This produced a volley of ' Him.' 

When he asked about Joseph there was no answer at all. 
'Teach us thy works to do. What are His works?' Chorus : 
' Miracles.' K. preached about keeping the good seed in our 
hearts. 'If we don't lead good lives, the seed is of no use, 
is it?' Asking about the name Joshua, K. said, 'It's the 

same as another name, isn't it? That name is Je ?' 

This produced 'Jehovah.' " 

National Education, a pure bureaucracy tempered by 

theorists 

"26. 5. 89. 'Truly a thinking man is the worst enemy 
the Princes of Darkness ever have.' So says Carlyle in Sartor 
Resartus, but this is not the English theory. In the school- 
room especially every old practice, however obviously absurd, 
is maintained till it is thrust out by a clamour for something 
else. In elementary education custom is checked by regulations 
emanating from ' my Lords.' ' My Lords ' are, I suppose, 
practically the permanent officials and the head inspectors. 



Faults of Class Teaching 157 

The two ' bosses ' in Parliament are mostly like the present 
ones, Lord Cranbrook and Sir W. Hart Dyke, men who 
have no more knowledge of education or care about it than 
the ordinary English gentleman. The officials see things from 
a bad standing-point for understanding them, and the head 
inspectors cannot see the wood for the trees. So as a rule 
the Department is cautious. A positive man like Mr Lowe 
may indeed introduce and carry through some monstrous 
change that may render education impossible for thirty years 
or so, but no one would be allowed to do this unless he 
were totally ignorant. If he had the smallest knowledge he 
would raise all the influential people against him as a theorist. 
But fortunately Mr Lowes are scarce, and generally speaking 
there is no tendency to over-bold legislation. The three forces 
at work are mainly: (1) The officials who want to pacify the 
public, and so long as this can be done leave things as they 
are. (2) The public which grumbles, but does not know 
what it wants. (3) The men who have studied the subject, 
men like S. S. Laurie, who are suspected as being too theo- 
retical. However, they have some influence, and in the future 
they will have much more. But if they were allowed to go 
their own way they would no doubt, in some particulars, lay 
themselves open to the charge of introducing arrangements 
that ' would not work,' and be bowled over by the officials." 



158 R. H. Quick 

PUBLIC SCHOOLS 

Preparation and Class Teaching 

" A very common cause of failure in class teaching is this, 
that the master considers the lesson chiefly as an examination 
of what the boys have learnt for themselves. If you ask a 
boy any evening what he has to do for the morrow you will 
perhaps find that he is expected to get through in an hour and 
a half an amount of work which, if he concentrated all his 
thoughts on the subject, he would not do satisfactorily in two 
hours. Of course boys do not give all their thoughts to the 
subject and they do not do their work satisfactorily. ' Doing 
an exercise ' is little better than scribbling words at random at 
the dictation of an elder boy. ' Preparing construing ' means 
running the eye over the chapter to be translated and turning 
out the meaning of half-a-dozen strange-looking words. So 
that preparation with most boys in the class is a farce. All they 
learn they learn with the master. If the master is sufficiently 
skilful to secure their attention to what is going on for the 
hour they are in class, they learn a good deal after all. But if 
this is the case, it would be well if masters made their arrange- 
ments accordingly. If the exercises which have been written 
are not also worked viva voce in class they do many boys no 
good whatever. If the boys cannot work them readily viva voce 
they are not fit to go on to the next exercise. Again with the 
construing, it is a sheer waste of time to go on the examina- 
tion theory with most boys. They know nothing about the 
Latin when they come up, and the master must recognise this 
fact, and instead of carrying on a constant squabble with them 
about it, he must ask them that which they do know and take 
care that the amount of this increases before they leave him. 
I suppose one of the commonest faults of young teachers, as of 
young examiners, is to ask only or chiefly such things as he 
thinks the boy questioned may not know." 



Bullying 159 



Preparation , Four rules for 

" Is it possible to secure good preparation without fear of 
punishment? I think it is if the following requisites were 
complied with: 1. The tasks should be very definitely set. 
2. They should be well within the boys' power. 3. Good 
preparation should in all cases be noted by the teacher and 
also bad preparation, so that there should be no ' chancing 
with success. 4. The work should not be allowed to get 
monotonous." 



Knocking into shape 

" One terribly natural incident [in a story of Ascott Hope's] 
is one of the boys drawing the hero out on the subject of 
home and ridiculing what he had learnt. How well I remember 
what I suffered in this way nearly thirty years ago ! A boy's 
feelings are very acute on everything connected with home, 
and so with diabolical instinct the tormentor always jeers his 
victim about his ' dear mammy ' or tries to shew that his 
father is some low fellow — perhaps even a shopkeeper. Such 
are the humours of ingenuous youth ! My own school life 
taught me that a boy is happy or miserable according as he is 
liked or disliked by his companions. Now the schoolboy's 
besetting sin is the idolatry of physical strength. Therefore a 
delicate, weak, timid boy cannot be popular. Such boys when 
left to the ' public school system ' do not get much good out of it. 
The essence of that system seems to be that the masters shall 
have as little to do with the boys as possible. A master in one 
of Ascott Hope's tales maintains that what bullying still goes on 
under this system is rather a good thing than otherwise. ' A 
small boy who comes to school has of course troubles to go 
through, and he must go through them. What does he come 
to school for but to get knocked into shape and have the 



160 R. H. Qiiick 

conceit taken out of him ? ' Whether he comes or not for the 
purpose, he does get knocked into shape, but into what shape? 
Not surely the best possible or the one suited to all alike. 
And the shape moreover is a more or less simulated one ; the 
boy has too often to simulate bad qualities and to dissimulate 
good. A very common notion exists in the minds both of 
boys and masters about taking the conceit out of a new boy ; 
but this means only compelling him to give up or conceal his 
own peculiarities." 

Punishments 

" Perhaps the most demoralising thing about the occupa- 
tion of a school teacher is his constant familiarity with mala 
prohibita which must be kept under by punishment. So long 
as he is in good spirits he is tempted to overlook these, but 
supposing he resists this temptation, he may yet give what 
punishment seems necessary without shewing any anger against 
the offender. But his dislike to punishing for trifles may lead 
him into the mistake of trying to make simulated anger do the 
work of punishment. Out of mere kindness he ' blows up ' or 
' jaws' a boy instead of punishing him. This of course he 
cannot do good-temperedly, so the mala prohibita become at 
once confused with the mala in se. And the effort to avoid 
punishing by substituting 'jaw' can never be effectual, so the 
master only risks his own good temper by endeavouring to 
spare the boys. When a master is out of temper setting 
punishments for mala prohibita comes naturally enough to him 
and is a relief to his feelings, but then he is too apt to treat 
a boy who whispers in class as he should treat a boy who has 
been telling lies. 

"The right plan is to annex certain penalties to those 
trifling offences which will become inconveniently frequent if 
not noticed, and then to exact these penalties with a mechanical 
and so feelingless precision. In this way punishments may be 



Theory of punishment 161 

both set and taken good-temperedly. So long as a boy does 
not think that he is ' spited ' he no more feels angry when he 
is kept in by a master than when he is kept in by the weather. 
It is however very much harder to punish in this mechanical 
way than one would suppose. One is always tempted to make 
exceptions in favour of boys one likes or of boys who do their 
work well and stand high in their form. In this case one has 
a tendency to shut one's eyes, or if that is impossible, to say, 
' The next time you do so and so,' &c. ' Forbear threatening ' 
would be a very good rule for the schoolmaster, but one ex- 
ceedingly hard to abide by. I have read a story somewhere 
(was it in Basil Hall?) of a captain who ordered a man to be 
flogged. The man pleaded that it was the first time there had 
been anything against him. 'Then I certainly shan't let you 
off,' said the captain, ' I never forgive a first offence.' The 
common notion that first offences ought to be pardoned seems 
to be based on two separate pleas : ist, that the offender's 
previous good conduct gives him a certain merit which should be 
allowed to outweigh his first offence ; 2nd, that so long as he 
belongs to the unpunished he has a strong inducement to 
avoid the degradation of punishment, and this inducement a 
single punishment would destroy. I can't decide now whether 
the captain or people in general have the best of it, but I know 
that threatening to do so and so ' next time ' is a bad plan in 
a school. Of course there are cases where the law has not 
hitherto been clear and no other course is open, but even then 
the master must take care that in his anxiety to prevent the 
recurrence of the offence he does not threaten more than he 
will be able to carry out." 

Theory of punishment 

" As James Mill has pointed out, the punishment theory 
assumes that to do so and so will be unpleasant to boys, and 
aims at making it less unpleasant than not to do the thing. 
The Reformers say, ' Cease to make the work unpleasant 

M 



1 62 R. H. Quick 

and you may give up punishing ' ; but this is a non sequitur. 
If a boy is to do his work because he feels pleasure in doing it, 
he must find more pleasure than he would find in anything 
else. And here the case of the enemies of punishment 
breaks down entirely, for it is only Lady Jane Greys who 
prefer Plato to hunting, and even if I could get my boys to 
like reading Moliere, I couldn't possibly get most of them to 
like it better than skating (the present amusement) or watching 
a cricket match. All one can say is that the ordinary forces 
tending in opposite directions are desire to do other things and 
fear of punishment. If one of these forces is lessened the 
other may be lessened also." 

Repression {the badge of all our tribe) 

" One is so constantly brought across boys in the way of 
repression that one gets into a state of permanent annoyance 
and dejection of manner. This is bad for both parties. I try 
never to repress when I can help it, but it is difficult not to get 
into a habit of repression. When Mr Squeers found Snawley 
junior doing nothing, and boxed his ears with a caution not to 
do it again, he was merely acting in what seems to me with my 
present lights the most natural manner in the world. One's 
function is pretty much like that of the weighted top of a gas 
receiver. There is a pressure from below of a hundred boys trying 
to break out into all kinds of disorder. Against this one has 
to exert a constant pressure downwards. Thus, however good 
the machinery of the place may be, there is a certainty that 
with boys it will keep on hitching. There will always be boys 
who can't find their boots, who have no pens, who have lost 
or left their books somewhere. If no punishment is given the 
carelessness becomes unbounded. If it is given, one is for 
ever coming in contact with the boys in a way disagreeable to 
both parties. The wear and tear of all this completely knocked 
all the elasticity out of me a few days ago when I was ' master 



Impositions 163 

of the week' [at Cranleigh]. If one's spirits give way, all is up. 
Everything one has to 'do becomes a bore, and one becomes 
oneself an awful bore to those under one. One loses one's 
hold of boys and vainly endeavours to get it again by setting 
impositions." 

Impositions 

" As to impositions, I am inclined to think they are not of 
any great use. They are very commonly set rather as a vent 
for the annoyance felt by the master than for any good effect 
they are supposed to have on the boy. Perhaps it is well to be 
respected, just as a wasp is, because one can sting when one 
likes, but such respect as this is destructive of good feeling. 
To prevent punishments becoming a mere outlet for his own 
irritation it is necessary for a master to be as uniform as 
possible. If certain transgressions are sure to bring certain 
punishments, neither master nor scholar will look on the 
punishment as the redress of a personal grievance. The 
certainty of punishment is much more important than its 
amount. A boy is not deterred from whispering in class &c. 
by the risk of a hundred lines, but he is by the certainty of 
thirty." 

Absence of system in public schools 

" I do not consider the instruction at Cranleigh altogether 
satisfactory. As at most schools, each man teaches his form 
what he thinks best in the way he thinks best, if he thinks at 
all about it. The instruction given in each form should have 
its place in a connected whole, and when a boy has got up to 
a certain point he should find a continuation of the same 
instruction in the form above. The Hurst plan of making 
different men responsible for the instruction in different 
departments has much to commend it. Nothing can be worse 



164 R. H. Quick 

than the plan we have at Cranleigh, where nobody is responsible 
for anything, except the headmaster, and forms are taken by a 
series of masters in the most promiscuous way." 

Boarding v. Day Schools 

" There is another great advantage which the masters' houses 
have over the school boarding-houses. It is very desirable, in 
some cases most important, that a boy should not be lost sight 
of in a crowd, and that there should be some grown person 
who knows more about him than that he is in the school and 
has not been recently flogged. The boy also should feel when 
he is in any difficulty that there is someone on whose con- 
sideration he has a larger claim than he could have in common 
with two or three hundred school- fellows. At Hurstpierpoint 
the excellent plan has been adopted of connecting a masters' 
sitting-room and bedroom with each dormitory, so that each 
' master of a dormitory ' has a set of boys who are his special 
charge. I believe a similar arrangement has been attempted 
elsewhere, even when the architect has done his best to render 
it impracticable. By this means the danger of a boy's being lost 
sight of in the crowd is partly avoided, but not so surely as if he 
lived with a master who was put in charge of him by the parents. 
But it seems to me very easy to exaggerate the advantages 
of a master's house. In examining a distinguished Harrovian 
(now at rest from his labours) the Public School Commissioners 
were surprised by his professing to stand in loco parentis to as 
many as fifty or sixty boys. What surprised them was the 
number, and it does not seem to have occurred either to the 
Commissioner or to the master that no one can stand in the 
place of a parent to any boy who has an actual parent to look 
after him. Mutual affection belongs to the very essence of the 
relation between parent and child, and it is absurd for anyone 
who neither loves nor is loved by the child to talk of filling the 
place of a parent. Whether the master has six boys in his 



French views of Public Schools 165 

house or sixty, they are his pupils, not his sons. He may take 
the greatest interest in them and devote himself completely to 
their welfare. The boys on their part may after their fashion 
be strongly attached to him, but even if he to some extent 
looks upon them as his children they have for him none of 
that tender feeling which attaches itself to their parents and 
home. 

" M. Demogeot in his Report on English Schools takes our 
masters' houses as the right contrasted with the wrong in the 
French internals. No doubt our masters' houses are vastly 
superior, but they are not, as M. Demogeot believes them, a 
substitute for home. M. Demogeot draws a pretty picture of 
the master's wife sitting at table with the boys, acting as a 
mother towards them. M. Demogeot is a foreigner and may 
be pardoned for making mistakes. Indeed, it requires a good 
deal of experience to understand the idiosyncrasies of the 
English schoolboy. He is a totally different animal to the boy 
at home. The boy at home belongs to the same world as his 
parents. Their acquaintances, their interests, their amusements, 
are his. He is mostly extremely talkative — wants to know 
everything and to conceal nothing. But the schoolboy has a 
world of his own, in which the schoolmaster has as much share 
as the coastguard officer in the world of the smuggler, or, in 
happier cases, as the drill sergeant has in the world of the 
recruit. At home he shares in the interests of his parents ; at 
school he has his own, and into these he knows that the master 
could not enter even if he would. And the boy having a world 
of his own does not care about that of the master. Even if 
only three or four boys live with the master, they never form 
part of his family. I believe it is the universal experience that 
instead of chattering away as they would by themselves or at 
home, they sit mute at the master's table, answer questions put 
to them as briefly as possible, and communicate with one 
another by significant glances and kicks under the table. The 
master's wife, if she shews the least interest in them, is the 



1 66 R. H. Quick 

object of their special aversion. From some mysterious cause 
they always resent her interfering with them in any way. I 
lately heard of a case in which the boys considered it a 
grievance that the master's wife (a very old lady) came into 
their bedrooms when they were going to bed. This complaint 
was not from outraged modesty, for boys do not shew any 
gene in the presence of the matron or the servants. If the 
schools are to be divided into two classes instead of three, we 
cannot put in one category the masters' houses — however small 
— and the day schools, but we must draw a broad distinction 
between the schools which take boys from the charge of their 
parents and those which do not. 

" Now that our system of secondary education is under 
revision it is very important that we should consider what 
distinguished men have to say about its main problems both in 
this country and on the Continent. The two great questions 
which are discussed by M. Boissier in the Revue des Deux 
Mondes (15/8/69) are the comparative merits of day schools 
and boarding schools and the curriculum. I purpose examining 
the first of these, on which M. Renan has published his views 
in an address {La part de la Famille et de V Etat dans V Educa- 
tion, par Ernest Renan, Levy 1869). Many of the objections 
urged against the vie de caserne in French internals do not 
apply to English boarding schools, but M. Renan has asserted 
some broad principles which tell against our system as much as 
against the French ; and the new schools which are springing 
up among us for the middle class have more in common with 
the French internats than we see in our older foundations. 

" To consider public schools only, they may be divided into 
three classes : 1st, those which are wholly or mainly day schools, 
2nd, those where the boys live in private establishments kept 
by the masters, 3rd, those in which the boys live in the school 
buildings and are maintained out of the common funds of the 
school, whether those funds are derived from endowments or 
from the payments of the parents (the hostel system). Schools 



Boarding Schools 167 

of this third class are now increasing and they seem in some 
respects adapted to the wants of the middle classes. There is 
a strong opinion in this country in favour of boarding schools. 
Hitherto they have been far more expensive than day schools 
and have therefore a higher social rank — an advantage which 
has an enormous weight with the middle classes. They also 
have a stronghold in the indolence of parents. Boys at home 
require a certain amount of looking after and the hard- worked 
father is glad to escape from the trouble and responsibility 
which this involves. He may too conscientiously believe that 
those who have experience in education will deal more judi- 
ciously with his boys than he could himself. Then again he 
has a large choice of boarding schools and his boys may have 
the benefit of country or sea air while he is obliged to live in 
a large town. 

" These considerations have turned the scale in favour of a 
boarding school. The middle-class parent has now to count 
the cost and he cannot afford the old boarding school prices 
whether of the great public schools or the respectable private 
schools. Here the new County schools come in to supply his 
need. By lodging and boarding a large number of boys to- 
gether in a building provided by subscription, these schools 
can give better teaching and better diet for ,£30 a year than a 
private schoolmaster could afford to give a smaller number of 
boys for ^£40. So the tide seems setting in favour of schools 
which introduce to some extent the barrack life of the French 
internats. After all, the resemblance between the two is more 
superficial than real. If we seek the most injurious features of 
the French lycees, the constant restraint, the unremitted sur- 
veillance of the usher, we must look for it, not in our public 
schools of any kind, but in our ordinary establishments for 
young gentlemen. Some of our County schools are. mastered 
by graduates of our Universities, and there is a strong disposi- 
tion to adopt, as far as economy will permit, the manners and 
customs of our old public schools. If then our secondary 



1 68 R. H. Quick 

education for the middle classes is to be given in boarding 
schools, can we improve on those which in the last few years 
have been established at Hurstpierpoint and in several other 
counties? Mr S. Hawtrey of Eton has strongly advocated the 
extension of the system of masters' houses to the middle class 
schools. He admits of course that this system could not be so 
cheaply carried out as the other, but he thinks that its superior 
advantages more than compensate for the additional outlay. 
The master-house system is certainly free from a defect which 
will probably shew itself more and more in the County plan. 
This plan hardly admits of any master except the headmaster 
being married. There are indeed cases of assistant masters 
marrying and living in the neighbourhood of the school, but 
this arrangement is not very advantageous to either party. The 
married man costs the school more than the bachelor living in 
the building, and does less work in return. On the other hand 
the sum which the school allows him instead of board and 
lodging is not enough to defray his own expenses, and his 
income is quite inadequate to maintain a wife and family. The 
consequence is that these schools are mastered by able young 
men who leave almost before they know how to teach, or by 
men the very reverse of able who stay on because they can 
hope for nothing better. In this respect the plan of masters' 
houses is very superior, but it would cost at least ^ioa boy 
more. In other words the worse system is within the reach of 
many more parents than the better. 

" There is too a notion, whether well or ill grounded, that 
boarding schools supply a useful hardening element in educa- 
tion. Affection seems to many people irreconcilable with 
proper discipline, and the father puts his boy away from him 
into the hands of the master, as we leave him with the dentist 
or the surgeon, not only because the operator is more skilful 
than he, but also because he believes him to be more judiciously 
stern. And the moral atmosphere of the boarding school is 
unquestionably colder (so to speak) than that of home, and a 



Headmaster s power of dismissal 169 

boy's character is thought to be braced up by it. When the boy 
grows up he will have to fight his way in a somewhat unfeeling 
world, and he gets in training for this by literally fighting his 
way in a petty world which is at least as unsympathetic as the 
Stock Exchange. 

" Summing up the real and supposed advantages of the 
boarding school, I must not omit what seems to me the 
greatest advantage of all, though it is not much thought of by 
parents. In a boarding school the hours of work are better 
distributed than they can be in a day school and common work 
alternates with common play. The benefit derived from hearty 
games is immense, and in point of fact the games are never 
hearty when the boys are drawn away by the interests of 
home." 

Tenure of Assistant Masters 

" A Letter to the Spectator. May n, '72. 

" It has hitherto been supposed that assistant masters have 
sufficient security in the good feeling of the headmaster and 
the force of public opinion. We know now the value of this 
security. The headmaster may, if he is a selfish man, calmly 
and deliberately, or if he is an impulsive man, in a freak of ill- 
temper, work the ruin of any of his subordinates. He may take 
from them their employment and their income, and turn them 
adrift to begin the world again. And public opinion will take 
the matter very quietly. The public cannot possibly judge of 
the merits of the particular case, and will most likely content 
itself with a vague notion that such arbitrary powers in the 
headmaster are sufficient to secure subordination and discipline 
among the assistant masters. And yet no such powers are 
conferred on colonels of regiments or captains of men-of-war, 
whose subordinates nevertheless do not often prove refractory. 

" Surely there should be a right of appeal, not only in the 
interests of the assistant masters, but of the country at large. 

" My letter to Spectator (1 1/5/72) considers the question 



1 70 R> H. Quick 

from one side only. My strong point is that it is unfair on a 
body of men to make their livelihood dependent on the will of 
an individual, and this unfairness has the bad result of making 
good men hesitate about entering the profession. At present, 
however, instances of unjust dismissal have been so rare that 
men are ready enough to run the risk. All that can be said is 
that the despotic power of the headmaster is an anomaly, and 
that it leads to individual cases of great hardship. 

" Butler yesterday in a ride we had put the other side. If 
there were any appeal from the headmaster, the headmaster's 
feeling of responsibility would be weakened, and this would be 
very bad for the school. The headmaster would quiet his 
conscience in allowing men to go oil in the school whom he 
knew to be more harm than good. Besides a headmaster 
would hardly be able to hold his own when he had a large and 
powerful staff under him, unless he and they knew that in case 
of a quarrel he could knock down any one of them. Of course 
one sees many advantages in a dictatorship when the dictator 
is almost sure to be a good man and must in the main use his 
power for the public service. Oddly enough the British public, 
which will not hear of a despotism anywhere else, is strongly in 
favour of it in schools. 

"What makes the question difficult is the very different 
sorts of schools concerned. In the leading schools like Harrow 
there is not much danger of getting lazy or quite incompetent 
men, but then the headmaster wants power in dealing with 
men who in attainments are his equals. In schools where the 
assistant masters are poll men the power of dismissal must 
be exercised much more freely. Oi: the other hand if the 
assistant masters are treated too much as the servants of the 
headmaster, their feeling of responsibility is weakened and they 
content themselves with doing what the head requires of them. 

" One good point in the despotism of the headmaster is that, 
while it moderates the opposition of assistants, it also enables 
him to tolerate an amount of opposition and even insult that 



Headmaster s power of dismissal 1 7 1 

he would not put up with if the offender had an independent 
position in the school. A really high-minded headmaster is 
opposed by an assistant who loses his temper and is violent in 
his language. If the assistant had the right of appeal, the head- 
master would say, ' If I tolerate this I prefer my berth to my 
character. I must dismiss X. and let the Governors decide 
between us. Not to do so would be shewing the white feather 
and my power in the school would be at an end.' But when 
the headmaster knows that by writing a note he could ruin the 
offender's career, toleration becomes not cowardice but magna- 
nimity. And his colleagues knowing his power respect him for 
not exercising it, and do not presume because he is forbearing. 
Of course when the headmaster is a tyrant at heart his power 
prevents free discussion, and in such cases, to some extent 
indeed in all, it weakens the consciousness of responsibility in 
the assistant masters as much as strengthens it in the head." 

Dismissal of Assistant Masters at Reading School 

" W. A. Cox, a fellow of St John's, Cambridge, has sent me 
a correspondence about the dismissal of himself and another 
Fellow of St John's from Reading Grammar School by Dr 
Stokoe. It seems the late Reading Grammar School Act 
places the power of dismissal in the hands of the Trustees and 
to the Trustees Cox and Stevens appeal. The Clerk to the 
Trustees then writes them word that the terms and spirit of the 
agreement between the Trustees and the headmaster will 
prevent their interfering in the matter of assistant masters, and 
the Clerk, no doubt speaking the opinion of the ordinary 
Britisher, says that such an arrangement is essential to the 
proper discipline and harmonious working in the school, as (he 
adds) ' I think must be self-evident to anyone who reflects 
dispassionately upon the subject.' Here is another instance 
that the ill-informed man is always the Rechthaber. The Clerk 
does not remember that the Act was presumably drawn by 



172 R. H. Quick 

people who had reflected dispassionately on the subject. He 
probably did not know that the Germans are quite capable of 
reflection and that they have deliberately arrived at an opposite 
conclusion. All the ordinary man can see is that discipline 
must be maintained. The instructive feature of this case is 
that the Trustees, even if they had to decide disputes between 
the head and his assistants, would almost always shirk responsi- 
bility and decide on supporting their headmaster through thick 
and thin. 

" Dr Butler says that if there were any right of appeal the 
headmaster would never be able to get rid of an assistant 
too old for his work. Oscar Browning says that, as it is, 
old men are never removed, because the headmaster does 
not like the invidious office of removing them, but if he 
could recommend the Trustees to dismiss a man he would. 
I take it the power of the headmaster would not actually 
be different if there were an appeal, but he would not be 
likely so readily to use his power. The gain of having an 
appeal would be great, not that the assistant masters would 
really be independent of the headmaster, but because they 
would then feel themselves part and parcel of the school 
and not the servants of the headmaster. Directly you make 
the superior autocratic you lower and deteriorate the sub- 
ordinates. The subordinate gets into the habit of doing 
just what his chief requires and nothing more. An immense 
deal of harm has been done by the despotism of some in- 
cumbents and the consequent deterioration of curates. The 
incumbent very often treats the curate as his servant. I have 
heard one incumbent ask another to ' send his curate ' to take 
a service, just as he might have asked him to send his footman 
on an errand. Curates thus treated become a migratory race 
and take little interest in their work. They feel that they have 
no stake or status in the parish. The churchwardens have 
more power than they." 



Headmasters power of dismissal 173 



Headmasters and Assistants. Tenure of Office 

" The great Felsted controversy is now raging, and also the 
Oscar Browning dismissal is being discussed in the papers, 
though the Times does all it can to suppress the discussion. 

" We Englishmen are like children ; we care for no abstract 
questions except when they are illustrated by particular cases. 
Thus in legislating we either think only of particular cases 
and so legislate all on one side, or we care so little about 
the matter that we leave our legislation in the hands of two 
or three people who put their own crotchets into the form of 
laws. When Parliament passed the Public Schools Act and 
put headmasters entirely at the mercy of the Governing 
Body and the assistant masters at the mercy of the head- 
master, neither the heads nor the assistants troubled them- 
selves much about the matter. Either they did not think 
about it or they supposed the change would not lead to 
much result. No doubt it won't lead to much result in most 
cases, but it will in some. Occasionally you will find a 
Governing" Body behaving in a high-handed way to a head- 
master, occasionally you will hear of a headmaster spiting an 
assistant and dismissing him on wholly insufficient grounds. 
But nobody said this at the time, and the Act was passed. 
Then come the inevitable instances, and forthwith not the pro- 
fession only, but the general public becomes excited, though 
the public seems rather ashamed for interesting itself in any- 
thing so mean as school matters. But the general question 
of the amount of power to be given to Governing Bodies and 
to the headmaster is being settled every week by some new 
scheme of the Commissioners. And what line do they take? 
Instead of settling on the best course, they are of ' a mixed 
opinion ' (to use the grocer's phrase), and they first give the 
assistant masters no appeal, next declare they will always give 
an appeal, and finally give an appeal occasionally. In some 



174 -R* H- Quick 

cases, too, they make the assistant masters entirely inde- 
pendent of the headmaster and vest all appointments and 
powers of dismissal in the Governing Body. Then again, 
they give the Governing Body the very dangerous power of 
settling in what proportions various subjects are to be taught 
in the school — ^ this, too, when the Governing Body is partly 
elected by the ratepayers every five years, so that the studies 
of the school may be revolutionised twice in every decade. 
Yet while all this absurdity is becoming law, not a creature 
seems to care a button about it ! The only thing we are 
really concerned to know is why the Bishop of Rochester, 
instead of replying to Mr Grignon's letter, handed over the 
correspondence to Messrs Day and Hassard ! " 

Debate on Assistant Masters in House of Commons 

"Last night (Ap. 3, 1876) K. Huguessen brought on a 
debate in the House about Assistant Masters. Reading the 
papers about matters on which one is well informed fills one 
with profound melancholy. Nobody seems to speak the truth 
or even to wish to speak the truth. ' Truth for its own sake ' 
is at a great discount ; everything, as Remusat says, has to be 
acted scenically for the public, and the actors try to make their 
parts as telling as possible without caring whether they really 
represent the original or not. It is an understood thing that 
the assistant masters must be ' kept in their proper places,' 
and the autocracy of the headmaster maintained. So the 
talkers in Parliament and the leader-writers in papers just 
say what will chime in with this view, without a thought of 
the facts of the case. And, oddly enough, these idle talkers 
assume that they thoroughly understand this most difficult 
question and chatter about it with all possible confidence. 
There seems little genuine information, and very little desire 
for any." 



Defects of Public School Education 175 



Defects of Public School Education 

"June 13, '72. Mr Joseph Payne has made a vigorous 
onslaught on the state of education in England in the Sessional 
Proceedings of the National Association for the Pro/noting of 
Social Science, Vol. v. No. 20. The lecture is too much of a 
Sirafpredigt, but he quotes authorities for his assertions. What 
he would have is a more systematic training of teachers and 
a stop put to didactic teaching. The teacher is to be the guide 
merely. This theory is undoubtedly the right one, but there 
are great difficulties in working it in a school, and most school 
teachers give it up altogether. If intelligent teaching is to be 
found anywhere in England, it ought to be in schools like 
Harrow, where we have for masters the very pick of the 
Universities. But, whatever may be the cause, our men here 
do not take much interest in the theory of their profession, 
and the results of their teaching as tested by the average boy 
when he goes to Oxford or Cambridge do not seem satisfactory. 
I attribute this in a great measure to our men being over- 
worked. If a man has a form of 35 boys, a pupil-room of 35 
other boys, and the management of a boarding house besides, 
it is quite impossible that he can have leisure to think what 
he is doing. So long as he gets through his work anyhow he 
is contented. As for improvements in education, you might 
as well talk to him of improvements in locomotives when he 
is in a hurry to catch a train. If he stayed to listen to you 
he might see that engines are capable of improvements, but 
he would prefer that an ordinary engine should take him where 
he wants to go. 

" Another great mischief is that men are distracted by 
having a lot of pupils in different parts of the school. . Another 
is that every man teaches as he likes without troubling himself 
about the methods of the man below him or above him, and 
as removes are rapid, a boy has the subject, to some extent. 



176 R. H. Quick 

and still more the manner of the instruction given him changed 
three times a year. 

" Of these evils the overworking of the masters is the 
greatest. J. A. C. and E. E. B., both rapid workers, spend 
sixty hours on their work every six week-days. 'I believe 
no man can keep his freshness through anything like that 
amount of school-work." 

Superannuation of Masters 

"March 8, '74. The Rugby Governors have, I believe, 
passed a rule of what seems early superannuation. Vaughan 
thought a headmaster should not remain at his post more than 
fifteen years. It is a melancholy conclusion to arrive at that 
when a man has acquired skill and experience and has not 
become in any way enfeebled, he nevertheless serves his school 
best by leaving it. But every kind of labour seems to harden 
into a lifeless routine, and masters have double functions : — 

(1) to keep the machine in working order and to work it; 

(2) (a much higher function) to be a living soul who cannot 
educate by mere machinery, however excellent. It is the 
latter function that is endangered by time. The master loses 
his freshness and becomes himself a bit of the machinery. 
How glorious is the enthusiasm one feels in the early days 
of one's work ! But this enthusiasm dies out and one is 
kept up to the collar, not by zeal, but by habit or sense 
of duty." 

Entrance Scholarships in Public Schools 

"Debate in the House of Commons, Aug. 4, 1875. The 
inquirers may have been prejudiced, but there can be no 
question but that the inquiry was conducted and the report 
drawn up in the most perfect good faith. This, to the best 
of my knowledge, is the first attempt ever made to ascertain 
the effect of competitive examinations on young boys, and 



Entrance Scholarships 177 

their verdict is that competition, even in this very limited 
form, is injurious. But if such competition as this is doubtful, 
what shall we say of the competition for entrance scholarships 
at the principal schools throughout England? Winchester 
was, I believe, the first school of any importance to devote 
its revenues to offering these large prizes to parents ; Eton 
and Charterhouse have followed ; the other great schools, 
even those which had no endowments which could thus be 
applied, found funds, in some cases out of the masters' pockets, 
for entrance scholarships, lest all the clever boys should be 
attracted elsewhere. What has been the consequence? Every 
gentleman with small means and a large family is perplexed 
how to get his sons educated. He naturally wishes the 
cleverer of them to enter some profession in which they may 
become distinguished. But he cannot afford a public school 
education for them in ordinary circumstances. The only 
chance for him is to enter them at twelve years old for a 
scholarship. There are thus a great many children who have 
to be trained for a competition at twelve years old. Mr W. 
Hunt asserted that their success must depend more on their 
tutors than themselves, and that only rich people's sons can 
get the best tuition. This is only partly the fact. As far as 
I have been able to observe, it is only clever boys who gain 
scholarships, but then it is not all clever boys, but only those 
who have had the ablest tuition. To run boys for these 
examinations has become a regular profession, and the suc- 
cessful trainer requires high remuneration. But we must not 
infer with Mr W. Hunt that this limits the scholarships to 
just the class of boys whose parents do not want the income 
of the scholarship. The needy professional man finds it a 
good investment to pay this heavy price for training. A bar- 
rister with a large family once said to me, ' I pay Mr X. 
^150 a year for my youngest boy. Of course this is much 
more than I can properly afford, but the boy is sharp and 
X. is a first-rate crammer, so I have little doubt that my boy 

N 



178 R. H. Quick 

will gain a scholarship after two years' training, and I shall 
more than get my money back.' 

" I believe firmly that these competitions do harm. In 
the first place they lead to unhealthy forcing of clever boys, 
and secondly they limit the instruction given in preparatory 
schools. Whilst the honour list for these schools is decided 
by Latin and Greek, Latin and Greek will be the subjects 
chiefly attended to, and the boys who have no aptitude for 
them will have to go practically uneducated. 

" Again, as Montaigne says, we must remember that boys 
have both bodies and minds, and that we cannot separate 
them. But this is just what our present system tries to do. 
In days gone by a Selvvyn, a Chitty, and a Denman were 
distinguished by a high place both in the class lists and on 
the river, but they can have no successors. At a very early 
age bifurcation comes into play. The boy with excessively 
developed brain, who needs plenty of outdoor exercise, is put 
to study eight, nine, or even ten hours a day for an entrance 
scholarship. The boy who has no chance in this race thinks 
of competitions of another kind, and lets all his interest and 
energies go into athleticism. And, as competitions of both 
kinds get keener and keener, there is an ever-widening gulf 
between the boys who do well in examinations and the boys 
who, in school phrase, are ' good at games.' 

"The Times of 3 June, 1879, has a letter from Ridding 
about entrance scholarships, from which it would seem that 
some agitation has been got up against these competitions. 
Ridding says, as usual, ' What on earth are we to do with 
our endowments if we don't give them in this way?' But 
if, as we contend, these competitive examinations do a vast 
amount of harm, it is no answer to say, ' We are very sorry 
but we have money that must be given, and we think it does 
less harm in this way than in any other suggested.' " 

To J. R. at Haileybury he writes : — 

"You headmasters, who are always fishing for clever boys, 
poison the water to bring the fish to the top." 



Headmasters 179 



Headmasters, the two requisites in 

" 12 Feb. '80. I was at Birmingham lately and found a 
man working quietly, but I expect most effectively and with the 
most hearty sympathy between himself and his subordinates. 
The two great requisites in a headmaster seem to me: (1) 
energy, (2) sympathy with his staff. The first is dangerous 
without the second, and the second without the first is not 
enough to secure respect. A frightfully energetic man may 
crush the life out of his subordinates. H. says Benson did 
this at Wellington College, and that they were cabined, cribbed, 
confined and were as dull as ditchwater. Things are very 
different at Birmingham. I hear that at A — X. is not at all 
equal to carrying on H.'s work. The men are totally different. 
There is a burly greatness about H. and not about X." 



The pike and small fry in one pond 

" 7 May, '85. A boy has recently died from injuries 
received from older boys at King's College School, London, 
and the public is very naturally and very properly excited 
.about it. But the public has no notion of how difficult the 
problem of boys' life out of school is. In grown-up life we 
find differences between the educated and uneducated, between 
young men and old, between the virtuous and vicious ; but all 
these differences are small compared with the differences we 
find in boys at different ages. The child of eight and the lad 
of sixteen seem hardly to have anything in common, and it is 
hard indeed to order a community in which some of the 
members are like the pike of the pond and the others are 
the small fry, and where, as in Pestalozzi's fable, there is a 
change going on of the smaller fry into pike." 



180 R. H. Quick 

Visit to Germany 

" Hamburg. 9 June, '68. When I was here before there 
was a large Volkschule under Scharlach, which still goes on ; 
but besides this the town has established a second and erected 
for it at a cost of ^8,400 (it would have cost twice as much 
to build in England) a noble building on the Promenade, one 
of the best situations in the town. The Director has the two 
upper floors for his house, and his rooms are good enough for 
a prince. At present there come daily to this building 2,600 
children, boys and girls (but the sexes are taught separately) of 
the very poorest in the town. The payment is is. a month or 
is. 6d. for two or more from the same family, but more than 
half the children are excused fees in whole or part. The 
teaching staff for this large number is only 33 men and 10 
women, which give 60 to every teacher. In the lowest classes 
there are over 100 pupils and several of the middle classes 
have 80 and 90. The Director himself gives only 8 lessons a 
week, but the amount of work that must fall upon him is 
terrible to think of. When I went in he was writing a note to 
a parent dunning him for the cost of a window his son had 
broken. Mrs Todgers says that in a boarding house the gravy 
alone is enough to shorten the life of a landlady. I should 
think that the windows alone would have the same effect on a 
director of 2,600 children. Besides all this there are most 
elaborate official forms to be filled up. 

" The instruction to be given is carefully arranged from time 
to time for each class, and every teacher keeps a record of 
what is done in each subject each week. The Director examines 
from time to time according to this class book. At the yearly 
examination before Easter each form has a copy-book for every 
subject, and every pupil copies a piece of work into this book. 
Some of the writing in Prima was beautiful. There is a 
library for the masters, to add to which the Director has a sum 
of money allowed every year." 



Masters in Germany 181 



Status of Masters in Germany 

"All teachers (except drawing and singing masters) in schools 
higher than Biirgerschulen must be graduates. These masters 
after their University course pass an examination as teachers 
and then have a Probejahr. During this they give some 10 
lessons a week and are present at other lessons given by 
masters. When they get a berth they can only be removed by 
the Ministerium and only on account of immorality. If they 
fall ill in the first 15 years they get permission to go to a Bad, 
and if the doctors certify that they never again will be fit for 
duty they may be dismissed without pension ; but they are 
generally allowed a pension. After 15 years' service they are 
entitled to a pension of a fourth of their salaries and their 
claim increases with length of service. This, however, is not 
considered sufficient and a bill has been introduced to increase 
the pensions. Political considerations sometimes lead to a 
teacher's being removed. Some members of the National- 
verein were required by the Government to retire from the 
Vei-ein, and when they refused they were removed from their 
posts ; but the Government had either to pension them or find 
them other posts. 

" A master may be dismissed for repeated striking or caning 
of boys. Last year (1867) the Ministerium published an edict 
that all masters were to abstain from corporal punishment as 
much as possible, and that if any master had to use it he was 
to report the fact to the Director of the school. Boxing the 
boys' ears is however a common practice according to Holzke, 
and the masters don't trouble themselves much in such matters 
about the minutes of the Ministerium. The master may not 
give lines to write, as our practice is, but may set lines to be 
learnt by heart. Two or three days' imprisonment is a common 
punishment. Expulsion is sometimes resorted to. H. says 
everything depends on finding out the few bad boys at first, 



1 82 R. H. Quick 

and letting them see it is not safe to play tricks. If they go on 
undiscovered they spoil a whole class. 

" Matthew Arnold seems to be quite wrong about the 
absence of political influences in school appointments. The 
Professor said that under Bismarck it had not been so bad 
as before, but that democratic opinions always hindered a 
man's advancement. When the town founded the Stadtische 
Gymnasium they would have liked to appoint as Director a 
man who happened to hold democratic opinions, but they 
knew the Government would not confirm the appointment if 
they made it. Holzke allowed that schools in Germany would 
not have attained, their present development without Govern- 
ment control, but thought that State control should now, or at 
least soon, be withdrawn. There is far too much State inter- 
ference. 

" M. Arnold must have shut his eyes and ears to everything 
that went against his governmental theories. He is specially 
absurd about the absence of political influence on appointments. 
Public opinion, he says, would not endure it. The fact is you 
can't have a paternal Government controlled by the opinion of 
the children. It may be a good thing to have a Government 
so strong that a man like Bismarck may differ from the nation, 
carry out his plans with a high hand, and in the end convince 
the nation he was right. It may be a good thing to have a 
public opinion so strong that a man of Lord Westbury's 
ability and cynicism must resign if convicted of making 
unworthy appointments. But we cannot have the two good 
things in the same country. Count Bismarck and his royal 
supporter would have caused a revolution in England. Lord 
Westbury would not have been attacked by a single newspaper 
in Prussia. The Prussians cannot take care of themselves, so 
the Government takes care of them with a vengeance, and if 
the Government occasionally treats its charge in the rough and 
ready manner of Betsy Prig, its charge must make the best 
of it." 



Re a I- Sch u len 183 



Essays in Real-Schalen 

" Herr Geist was preparing this class (the Upper Second) 
to write an essay. They have to do one of these essays every 
three weeks, and besides this the teacher goes through some 
suitable subject — such as 'The influence of the sea upon the 
people who live by it ' — and then makes boys speechify with 
the matter he has given them. These two exercises Herr G. 
said were valuable, because boys generally are gedankenlos and 
they give a master the opportunity vieles einpumpen. This 
pumping in is just the weak point of German education, as far 
as I can see. The German masters finding boys gedankenlos 
behave like children who when a piece of ground is given them 
for a garden stick in it a lot of flowers they have plucked else- 
where. In this essay too difficult subjects seem chosen, and 
the boys are told too much. To-day's essay was on the lines 
in Wallenstein " Schnell fertig ist der Jungling mit dem Wort 
&c." The different causes of a young man's mistakes were 
gone into, the value of his sittliche Meinung &c. The difficult 
line about Things judging themselves was explained by reference 
to the objective and subjective. The boys showed a fair 
amount of intelligence in what they said, but I think the 
teacher did a great deal too much for them." 



A lesson at the Paedagogic Seminar at Halle 

" Once a week a student has to read an essay which he has 
prepared on some paedagogic subject before the other students 
and Cramer. To-day the subject was Trotzendorf. The essay 
was not read by the Verfasser but by another student, who, 
when he had finished reading proceeded to criticise various 
points in it. The author gave explanations and defended his 
views. Cramer acted as arbitrator and umpire. No other 
pupils spoke. The essay took nearly an hour to read, the 



184 R. H. Quick 

discussion about three-quarters of an hour, and Cramer's 
summing up a quarter. As the subject was historical, one 
could not have expected an interesting discussion, but we had 
one nevertheless. The question was why Trotzendorf used 
boys as teachers. Cramer pointed out that this arose from the 
necessity of the case. Trotzendorf could not get teachers, but 
he shewed his greatness in making the most of the forces he 
had. At the same time, said Cramer, to be responsible over 
others has in itself great educative value ; and he proceeded to 
quote Tom Brown, a book which he had lately recommended 
to his class. Anent Trotzendorf's organisation of consuls, 
praetors, &c, and a court of schoolboys before whom minor 
offences were tried, Cramer said that Trotzendorf had several 
objects in view. First it was a capital means of cultivating 
rhetoric and making Latin a living speech to the boys. He 
who made a good Latin speech in his defence got off with a 
lighter punishment. Next his organisation proceeded from 
admiration of the Roman life and gave a charm to the study of 
it. And then again Cramer dwelt on the value of the opinion 
of boys about the offences of boys. The master knows the 
circumstances perhaps, but only the boys understand the 
motives. He even praised the plan of allowing the boys to 
decide which should receive a reward. All punishments, he 
allowed, must be in a measure fixed, or the idea of injustice 
will soon arise ; but there must be a certain adaptability 
reserved. He pointed out that Trotzendorf, though a disciple 
of Melanchthon, from whom he named his school Schola 
Philippica, was not, like Sturm, a thorough humanist. He was 
too much possessed and carried away by the ideas of the 
Reformation to be a thorough-going humanist." 

Eton 

" In William Ellis's 'Aim of Education,' a pamphlet which 
represents the straiter sect of Utilitarians, I came on the 



Eton 185 

following passage, with which I agree : — ' Those schools for 
the children of the poor are the best which are most successful 
in fitting them and in preparing them to become fit to preserve 
themselves from destitution. Those schools for the children of 
the richer classes are the best which are most successful in 
fitting them and in preparing them to become fit to preserve 
themselves in the expenditure of the wealth which they will 
have no occasion to earn, from frivolity, profligacy, and in- 
difference to the sufferings and helplessness of others.' Would 
Eton bear such a test as this? I fear not. I can fancy a 
radical like P. raging when he thinks of Eton. I am a con- 
servative at heart and Eton has a fascination for me. I was 
at chapel there yesterday (23 Nov. '68), and found much food 
for meditation not altogether tending to raise my spirits. Few 
boys joined in the hymn which was to the Saviour. Their 
silence to me was significant. I could have fancied them 
shouting lustily a paean to ' Mars, Bacchus, Apollo,' or Venus, 
but the Peasant whose kingdom was not of this world was 
hardly to them an ideal to worship. In the lesson for the day 
were the wotds, ' Because I have chosen you out of the world 
therefore the world hateth you,' and I thought that perhaps 
spiritual Christianity never could become national. Ordinary 
Protestant religion at all events offers salvation to the individual 
only on condition of his believing in the perdition of the 
great mass of his associates. The Church of Rome, and in our 
Church Maurice and his school, have represented Christianity 
as national ; and Maurice at all events would sympathise with 
the chieftain who refused St Augustine's baptism rather than 
separate himself from his lost kindred. 

" But to revert to Eton, I wonder what creed the young 
' barbarians ' have. Boys are more thoughtful than their 
elders might suppose, and if they cannot make the ideal 
that they worship as Etonians harmonise with the ideal that 
they receive as Christians, the latter is likely to go to the 
wall." 



1 86 R. H. Quick 



French Lycees 

" The lyceens have to work very hard, chiefly with a view to 
examination for fiaccalanreat-es-lettres or es-sciences or both, 
which they take on an average at 18. P. had lost six months 
from breaking his arm, so he was obliged to read up his 
philosophy with a coach while he was in Rhetoric, and he 
said that he worked for a whole year from 6 in the morning 
till 10 at night and on Sundays till 3 p.m. He hardly opened 
a book for two years after he passed, and he thinks the over- 
work did him a great deal of harm. 

" After all, studying for marks is a different thing altogether 
from studying for knowledge. The two may perhaps be com- 
bined, but they seem generally antagonistic. Unfortunately 
the majority will work only under the stimulus of the coming ex- 
amination. I confess it seems to me doubtful whether the intel- 
lectual level is really raised by getting a great amount of work 
out of youths before the age of 18. They have no time for 
thought and if they had, the necessity of acquiring what is 
telling in examinations would kill it. Suppose cricket were 
banished from our public schools, and school work were no 
longer the -n-apepyov, would the majority of our public school 
men be more intelligent than they are at present? No doubt 
we go to great lengths in leaving the mind fallow, but the more 
I see of the middle-class German and Frenchman, the more I 
am surprised by the small residuum of their school course. 
They are not intellectual or even literary, and perhaps nature 
has ordained that the great majority of men shall not be 
intellectual or literary. If so, ilfaut en prendre son parti. 

"Dec. '78. Some ten years ago Matthew Arnold was sent 
by the Middle Schools Commission to inquire into the school 
systems of the Continent, and the lesson for us with which he 
returned was ' Organize (by the action of the State) your 
secondary education.' Whether he would have State day 



Brighton Grammar School 187 

schools as in Germany or "State boarding schools as in France, 
is not clear from his Report, nor is that doubt resolved in his 
article Porro unum necessarium (Fortnightly Review, Nov. 1878) . 
If we might venture to measure the collective wisdom of the 
French nation by the unwisdom of an individual foreign critic 
(myself), we should say that though much might be learnt 
from our neighbours about instruction, they teach us only what 
to avoid in education. We doubt whether the collective 
wisdom of the French nation is, after all, quite responsible 
for the lycees. These institutions seem rather the Jesuit 
Colleges reformed and drilled in accordance with the military 
ideal of the First Empire." 

Brighton Grammar School 

"I have to-day (19 Oct. '75) spent the morning from 9 to 12 
with Mr Marshall at the Brighton Grammar School. Mr M.'s 
views are that a backbone of fact must be committed to the 
memory and made as familiar as the multiplication table, but 
that great discretion must be used in selecting this amount of 
fact to be acquired. Mr M. has had his ' drill ' in every sub- 
ject printed, and the boys have to work this up from the first 
and to keep it up all the time they are in the school. Mr M. 
is the very opposite of a crammer and he endeavours to mini- 
mise the amount of fact as much as possible. In history he 
gives no fact that has not important consequences to be 
deduced from it. If nothing can be hung on the peg it is 
discarded as useless. I may be doing him an injustice but I 
am inclined to believe that Mr M. thinks of the reasoning 
powers too exclusively. There is a preparatory school under 
the same roof and some boys come as early as seven. The 
younger boys, says Mr M., get up capitally. All boys have 
something definite to learn by heart put before them, and 
the youngsters acquire the ' drill ' with great satisfaction to 
themselves and their masters. But when the reason is called 



1 88 R. H. Quick 

upon in the after stages, it does not at first respond and for a 
time there seems little progress. But if they have got accus- 
tomed to learn things by heart without any thought of the 
meaning, they will of course have great difficulty in changing 
their method of study. So I should like the youngsters' 
imaginations to be made more of, and the drill reserved till the 
knowledge could be applied as soon as it was acquired. But 
it is very tempting, as all teachers have found it, to take 
Quintilian's advice and teach children forms of words which 
will afterwards come in useful. But though I think the drill 
may be begun too early, I heartily agree in the plan of taking 
the essentials and learning them forwards and backwards and 
every other way and keeping them up — a provision which 
unfortunately is often neglected, so that advanced pupils are 
puzzled by a question about the rudiments of their subject. I 
should say that these drill tables would work admirably in 
making the essentials familiar to all the boys and in giving 
defmiteness and continuity to the instruction. 

" Mr M. goes in for more elasticity than is usual in large 
schools. He even makes the hour at which his boarders rise 
in the morning vary. He rings a bell in every dormitory by a 
wire from his own room and the boys have to assemble 20 
minutes afterwards. In school he takes a subject for the 
prominent subject for a time, and then another subject comes 
to the fore and the other is merely kept up. French is the 
leading subject at present and has five hours a week besides 
preparation. . . . 

" Mr M. had a capital device for stimulating his boarders to 
work. Whenever the average marks gained in the week by the 
house reached a fixed height, he had an evening of charades 
&c, ending with a supper of hot sausages and mashed 
potatoes. Every week a list is hung up and kept up with the 
boys' marks ; those over the average are called helpers and 
those below, who form a division by themselves, are called 
hinderers. There are a number of house prizes given, one for 



Mr H aw trey s School 189 

the best chess player, one for the boy who teaches chess best, 
one for the best actor in charades, &c." 

Mr Hawtrey 1 s School at Slough 

" The boys are worked on a thorough system which knocks 
Latin and Greek into them most effectually (does it knock all 
else out of them?). They work from 8.30 to 1 in the morning 
with half-an-hour's break ; then nothing till 5, when they have 
two more hours. This routine goes on quite regularly. The 
effect on the masters, my informant, himself a master, tells me, 
is that they seem to lose all individuality. The boys never 
work alone. There is a syntax master who lectures the three 
divisions of the school, and the masters make their own exer- 
cises and fit in everything to the syntax master's teaching. 
Every fortnight there is an examination and it is seen how each 
master's boys are getting on. Hawtrey pays his men ^200 a 
year with board and lodging. The feeding is sumptuous for 
everyone. The agreement with masters is that they may be 
sacked at the end of any term without notice, and if a man's 
boys do badly he goes. The odd thing about the teaching of 
classics is that it is entirely synthetical. The language is not 
taught by rules, but by having to make sentences in it in such 
a way that the knowledge of each idiom and each construction 
is knocked in, and construing is not begun till high up ; and 
O. asserts that thus it comes quite easy. The boys are drilled 
for Eton and at Eton they generally take the highest place 
possible. These schools seem to keep a particular examination 
in view, and to teach for that. If you would succeed you must 
try no experiments. For scholarships another sort of training 
is necessary. You must hammer away at verses. Hawtrey 
does not teach anything himself, but simply impresses the boys 
and the British parent. ' Before I went to Hawtrey's,' said 
O., ' I thought boys could not understand the Public School 
Latin Primer; now I know they can, and that it is a splendid 
book and a marvellously powerful instrument in the master's 



190 R. H. Quick 

hands.' For my part, I have always thought it folly to teach 
beginners the greater part of the Primer. Why teach the 
niceties of a difficult language before the prominent facts have 
become familiar ? I want boys to learn partly by imitation, 
and how can they imitate before they see the language at 
work ? However, I am so totally unsuccessful in every way 
just now that it is with the utmost diffidence that I would 
disagree even from Hawtrey." 

Girls' Grammar School, Bradford 

"To-day (26 Sept. '77) I have been over to Bradford to see 
Miss Porter and the Girls' Grammar School. My impression 
of the school is very favourable, but I think the teachers teach 
too much. There is no place-taking. ... I heard a history 
lesson by Miss Larner. No text-book was used, but the 
teacher read extracts. The girls attended well and answered 
questions briskly. Miss Porter tells me the Yorkshire girls' 
schools are still of the Squeers type, but parents think the 
girls must ' finish ' at a boarding school. The girls have been 
very badly taught before coming to the Grammar School. One 
girl said a noun was of the ' common aster gender,' and stuck 
to it that this was what she had learnt in the grammar used 
at the previous school. The book was produced, and on 
turning to the place Miss Porter found the statement that 
some noun was ' common as to gender.' Another girl main- 
tained that there was only one continent because she had 
heard of people going on ' the continent.' A teacher had ex- 
plained ' Matthew was a publican ' as meaning that he went 
about collecting the taxes ; this was reproduced as ' St Matthew 
used to go about picking up small nails.' " 

Buns en on Schulpforte 

" 12 Aug. '79. Rigi Scheideck. This morning I had a 
long talk with Herr v. Bunsen. He was educated at Schulp- 
forte. He says the boys did better there than at any other 



Brighton Grammar School 191 

school because they were left somewhat to their own initia- 
tive and had one day a week of free study. During this day 
they were kept in certain hours just as on other days,, but might 
choose their own work. The plan seems to have ended in 
some cases in boys putting off till then their regular school 
work. The main thing was the literary and classical tone of 
the place. Herr v. Bunsen used to get up and read Homer 
for an hour before school, though he declares he was one of 
the idlest boys there. The boys are sent by certain towns 
which have nominations, at least some 200 are. Herr v. B. 
wants to introduce competition. 

" He says education made great strides under Falck. The 
great dispute between Realschule and Gymnasium Bunsen 
would end by doing away with Realschulen and making the 
Gymnasium teach more mathematics and Naturwissenschaft. 
For this he would make time by doing away with Latin and 
Greek composition altogether. There ought to be no dis- 
tinction, as there now is, between the man who has been at a 
Gymnasium and the man who has only been at a Realschule. 
Falck had not the wisdom or the courage to deal with this 
great Realschule question, and now a reaction has set in 
towards the system of Mliller." 

Attendance of masters at lessons 

"19 July 1880. I have again spent the morning at the 
Brighton Grammar School, Mr C. J. Marshall letting me go 
about wherever I liked and the masters receiving me with ap- 
parent cordiality, though as one or two of them were nervous 
they were probably wishing me at Jericho. Their attendance 
in the schoolroom as spectators should, I think, be from time 
to time enforced on all masters. As I have before found, it 
brings home to the teacher the extreme dullness of school 
work. The ordinary schoolmaster can grind boys and can 
do nothing else. Now Mr Marshall seems to me to have 



192 R. H. Qiiick 

accepted this state of things and to have worked it in the 
most successful way possible. He settles certain forms of 
words which are to be drilled into the boys, and the masters 
and boys then have a definite task to go at. Almost all our 
school-books are so big that accurate knowledge of them is 
out of the question, so boys half learn their lessons and then 
half forget the half, so that they never retain more than a 
quarter, if that. But Mr Marshall's ' drills ' have to be got 
up, and they are got up. There is therefore a continuity 
about the instruction which makes it simplex et idem." 
After giving his impressions of various classes : — 
" Now what is one to say of all this ? One finds a man 
of very high intelligence and tremendous energy over a large 
school where he has very inferior men for his assistants and 
not a strong staff even numerically. To exist at all he must 
' succeed,' i.e. he must satisfy the examination test imposed 
by his Committee and the parents. If he were to adopt any 
peculiar plan founded on a different conception of education 
from the conception in the minds of his Committee and 
parents, the school would fail in examination and he would 
cease to be headmaster. Moreover he would not, even if 
backed up by his Committee and parents, carry out any high 
conception of education, for his assistants would not be able 
to understand it, and what could he do single-handed? So 
he goes to work to succeed in doing what the generality of 
schoolmasters are trying to do. He sees that most school- 
masters fail because there is so much waste in their schools. 
Boys learn things by heart that are not worth learning, and 
they learn so as never thoroughly to know them, and then 
they cut a poor figure when called upon to ' answer the 
examiner.' Mr Marshall first of all cuts down what is to 
be learnt, and having got what he thinks the irreducible 
minimum, he organizes his school so that this minimum 
may be drilled into the boys thoroughly and continuously. 
Having made himself quite safe as far as the examiner is 



Teaching by drill 193 

concerned, he has time, he says, to give the kind of instruc- 
tion which educates. But he seems to admit that no one is 
qualified to give such instruction but himself. The other 
masters must simply carry on the drill. Now I haven't the 
least doubt that this drill system is excellent for examination 
purposes: it secures just that which gets such high marks — 
perfect accuracy. But, putting the examiner out of sight (as 
we theorists can, and the schoolmaster cannot), we may con- 
sider whether the drill system is good, first for learning the 
subjects, second for education. 1. In learning a foreign lan- 
guage it is of immense value to know some things, e.g. the 
auxiliary verbs, thoroughly. Most learners fail for want of 
knowing perfectly the main things. E.g. in French I am 
bothered because even the numbers do not call up the right 
idea without my having to think. I would therefore have a 
drill in certain things, but my drill would leave out many 
rules about the relative &c. which may help at a later stage 
to classify phenomena, but which should not precede the 
phenomena. A language like French can't be put together 
by rule : it must be learnt by imitation, and instead of drilling 
in rules which children cannot apply, I should rather drill 
them in model sentences, then vary these sentences after the 
Prendergastian method. Why too should not proverbs, fables 
and easy poetry be learnt by heart? I admit that in French 
the pronunciation is here fearfully in the way. To sum up, 
I take it that in foreign languages drill is an excellent thing, 
but I don't agree with Mr Marshall about the subject-matter 
of the drill." 

(After a sketch of what a geography lesson is and what it 
should be.) 

"The great mistake of the schoolroom is the everlasting 
grind in the apparatus of expression and the means of getting 
ideas without any attempt to occupy the minds of the young 
with the ideas themselves. Though the one powerful faculty 
of the young mind is the imagination, a whole morning passes 



194 <R- H- Quick 

without a single image being brought before the boy's mind. 
He manipulates figures, he makes unmeaning marks in his 
copy books, he learns the parts of French irregular verbs and 
exercises in the use of etre with reflexive pronouns. He is 
taught to repeat in certain connections a great number of 
proper names, and these names are called either history or 
geography. But whatever may be the subject the school- 
master lays hold of, he forthwith murders it to dissect, and 
makes his pupil learn up the names of the disjecta membra 
without giving him the smallest conception of their relation 
to the whole. A young Frenchman at the grammar school 
is found to know much less about French (that is, to have 
much less examination knowledge of French) than his class- 
mates, and when the schoolmaster lays hold of the unfortunate 
English language he tortures it till it is black in the face, so to 
speak, and looks as hideous as Latin grammar or any other 
mummy in his collection." 

Sedbergh Grammar Schovl 

Governors' 1 Meeting 

"31. 7. 84. It is impossible for a large Committee to 
manage things. One or two must manage and the rest take 
a back seat. This makes it difficult to decide what I ought 
to do when placed ex officio on the Governing Body. Mr F. S. 
Powell has made a hobby of the school and has determined 
that it shall be in his own phrase the Eton of the North. 
His policy therefore has been to make it as good a school 
as it can be made by any amount of outlay. The Charity 
Commissioners seem to have intended that it should be a 
cheap classical school, but they weakly consented to very 
expensive buildings being raised, bargaining only that the 
capital thus spent should be paid back in instalments. This 
seems to me rather an odd policy, for it makes the school a 



Sedbergh Grammar School 195 

dear classical school at present so as to provide for a cheap 
classical school hereafter. It makes the present generation 
pay in part for future generations. 

" But Mr Powell wants a school with every possible ad- 
vantage in the way of buildings &c, so he gets the Com- 
missioners to release us from this repayment to capital for 
several years and spends money on an expensive sanatorium. 
His zeal is of the most genuine kind, and he himself gives 
a swimming-bath while Mr Wakefield gives a gymnasium. 
All these things are great advantages no doubt, but they all, 
even when given, increase the cost of education. My notion 
is that a fine educational endowment like ours should not be 
devoted to providing the rich with cheap luxuries, so I find 
myself in opposition to the Powellian policy. But Mr Powell 
has already gone so far that even were he to die to-morrow, 
it would be very hard to reverse the policy and bring down 
the expenses. All I can do is to keep it in check as much 
as possible. 

" In another matter I find myself in opposition to my 
co-governors. Mr Birkbeck calmly announces that as no 
penalties are attached to our breaking through the provisions 
of our scheme we are at liberty to neglect them whenever 
we please, and leave it to the Charity Commissioners or 
anybody who likes to take us to task. The Governors have 
always acted in this spirit. They have not attempted to 
provide an English education for Sedbergh boys, though the 
scheme gives these boys an English day-school at ^4 a year 
as the maximum fee. Again, they have only once in eight 
years published their accounts, though bound to do so yearly. 
This policy I am distinctly opposed to. The Governors say 
quite truly that they wish the welfare of the school as much 
as the public does, and they understand it better, so they 
don't want the public to interfere. But a school of a par- 
ticular sort was by law established, and these gentlemen are 
pleased to substitute what they think better. It seems to me 



196 R. H. Qtcick 

that it is more important that we should be a law-abiding 
people than that Messrs Powell and Birkbeck should have 
free scope to carry out their private ideals with public property, 
however admirable those ideals may be." 

Our middle- class private schools 

"8. n. 80. Terrible tales are told of these schools, and 
one tries to think they cannot be as black as they are painted ; 
but what I have seen to-day makes me fear the worst. I have 
been over two connected houses of F. P.'s at Leatherhead. 
They are occupied by an old lady and her son, she occupying 
one house as a girls' school and he the other as a boys'. 
The rooms are all very small and the houses are in no way 
adapted for school purposes, but twenty-two girls were at one 
time crammed in as boarders, and there are fifteen now. I 
don't know what the charge for them is, but it must be very 
low, for the filth and general decay of the place made it 
unfit for human habitation. The schoolmistress was evi- 
dently engaged in a grim struggle to live, and hardly a 
successful struggle ; at least she is two or three quarters in 
arrear with her rent, and is scheming to get away without 
paying it. No parents who had any regard for their children 
would send them to such a place, and yet unfortunate children 
are sent to her. How is it that they are kept alive? They 
are crowded six or eight of them into a small bedroom not 
large enough for two (of course they sleep two in a bed). 
The kitchen department stunk so fearfully that we could 
hardly get near it. There was an entire absence of washing 
or cleanliness of every kind throughout the place. The space 
of ground behind, which was supposed to be a garden, was 
given up to fowls, which seem also to frequent the stairs of 
the kitchen floor. Yet this was a 'genteel' school, and the 
mistress complained that she could not get day pupils, for 
there were no middle-class families living near and the parents 



Private Schools 197 

of her boarders would not allow her to take tradespeople's 
children. If there is any truth in sanitary science there is 
bound sooner or later to be an outbreak of fever or some 
zymotic disease, for every precept of that science is utterly 
disregarded. But if the poor children do escape so far, their 
general health and growth must suffer terribly. The food 
from such a kitchen could not be wholesome, and while the 
mistress's grim struggle with poverty is going on it is not 
likely that the food given is what it ought to be either in 
quality or quantity. I think we are as a nation extremely 
culpable in allowing such schools to be kept. We do not 
permit the poor to put their children to work. There are 
thousands of labourers earning iSs. a week and less who 
could get 6s. a week more for their children's hire if they 
were allowed to sell it, but they are not. These men are 
compelled by the state to forego for the education of their 
children a sum equal to a third of their whole earnings. 
Yet, while we make this demand in one class, we permit 
another class to escape from the care of their children or 
to place them where they are starved and stunted in mind 
and body, simply to escape paying for them what they ought 
to pay." 

Private Schools 

" 23. 9. 88. W. J., who has to-day left us, has given me 
a glimpse behind the scenes in private school life which may 
be, and sometimes is, truly horrible. Everything is in the 
hands of some big fellow or of a knot of two or three big 
fellows, and they are apt to abuse their power. W. J. was 
some years ago at A.'s school. A. had been, I think, a fairly 
good schoolmaster, but not a man of a very high type. The 
latter part of his time he gave up concerning himself with 
the out-of-school life of the boys, and the assistants simply 
let things slide. So the most atrocious bullying became the 



198 R. H. Quick 

common thing. In bathing the small boys were held under 
water till they came to dread the bathing day. The biggest 
boys established a regular system of robbing little boys. If a 
small boy brought back gold this was taken from him, and 
he was allowed to keep any odd silver he might have. If he 
had no gold he was robbed of his silver and allowed only to 
keep his coppers. Tuck was carried off from some boys, and 
when one of them tried to conceal it in a friend's box, the 
box was kicked to pieces. W. J. on one occasion was robbed 
of 55"., which was taken out of his pocket. He lost his temper 
and became dangerous, so the robbers tried to pacify him by 
giving him back half-a-crown. However, he marched off to 
find the headmaster, and the robbers then implored him not 
to tell and gave back all his money. Except among the 
professional criminal class there is, as far as I know, nothing 
that comes up to the shameless immorality one finds in 
school life." 

L 'Ecole Modele, Brussels 

" 1 May '79. I have just visited this school. The plan 
of the building and all the physical arrangements and appa- 
ratus are admirable. [These are fully described.] 

" I saw some teaching, but it was not remarkable. First 
a reading lesson. Each boy who read had to come to the 
master's estrade. There was no record kept of his perform- 
ance. There was nothing, as far as I could see, to keep up 
the attention of the rest. The reading was of an ordinary 
kind. Very soon the lesson slipped away into a grammar 
lesson, both form master and director putting questions about 
when quelque is variable &c. These grammatical distinctions 
are sure to crop up when French is the language. I after- 
wards heard the youngest children (about thirty-four of them) 
do arithmetic. Any questions, or rather problems, were asked 
and a particular child put on to answer and discuss them, and 



Brussels Schools 199 

then to come up and make lines on the board or use the appa- 
ratus to test the answer. The consequence was that very few 
of the thirty-four did anything at all. A great effort is made 
to get correct conceptions and to avoid words without ideas. 
Hence no books are used except as reading books. Unfor- 
tunately the anti-clerical position endangers the equilibrium of 
the teacher. I asked about a scholars' library. I was told 
there was one, but it was difficult to get books for it ; all the 
Government books were written by the clergy, Jesuits &c. 
The arrangement of studies gives no home work. There are 
four lessons in the morning and two in the afternoon. The 
lessons are 45 minutes in length, and the odd 15 minutes 
are spent in play in the open court or, when it rains, in the 
inner covered court. I am inclined to think the 45 minutes 
plan is a good one. The French have two-hour lessons, and 
English masters, when they have lessons they like, such as 
Latin, find one hour barely enough. But we should look at 
things from the boys' point of view, and to them the time 
seems at least twice as long as it does to us. Of course 
some lessons might be longer than others, but I suspect the 
lessons which interest the teachers are not those which should 
go over the 45 minutes. All the scholars have three gymnastic 
lessons of half-an-hour in the week." 



A Brussels Girls' 1 School 

"3 May '79. I have just come in from a visit to the 
Rue de la Paille girls' school. The buildings and plant are 
wonderful. Everything is light, airy, beautifully clean and 
entirely without dust. It looks as if the place had just been 
put in thorough repair. How on earth do they keep it in 
this state? In the school I was as much pleased with the 
immaterial as the material belongings. The Directress, a very 
bright, pleasant little body of some forty years, took me about 
everywhere. 



200 R. H. Qicick 

" First I saw a geography lesson given to the youngest class 
but one. The children were seven to eight years old and over 
thirty in number. It seems geography is begun with a plan 
of the room, the corridors &c, but this stage had been passed 
and the subject was the town of Brussels. They were in a 
splendid class-room, which would easily have taken twice the 
number of children. On the walls were large and handsome 
engravings of Schiller, Luther &c. There was a long table at 
which about twenty could sit ; the rest of the room was free. 
There was a large black-board which worked up and down in 
two parts like window-frames. The children, when we went 
in, had plans of Brussels, one for each child, spread on the 
table. The children themselves were on the floor. A long 
piece of cord was held by five or six children to represent 
the boulevards, with labels of the different boulevards strung 
on it at the proper intervals. The teacher went on in this 
way. ' All in Brussels.' Thereupon all the children except 
the cord-holders crowded into the enclosure made by the 
cord. Then the teacher cried out : ' Marie N., go to the 
Faubourg so and so.' The child set out and sometimes 
went right, sometimes wrong. When she went wrong all the 
others showed great eagerness to set her right. They were 
asked about the points of the compass, and sent at times to 
look at the maps. Should not a compass have been in the 
room? When they had had enough of this running about 
they went to their places, and the teacher made them answer 
questions about it. She made them describe what they saw 
in streets through which they were in the habit of passing, 
thus bringing their observation to consciousness and making 
them keep their eyes open for the future. The Directress 
told me that they made plans for themselves (at school — 
there is no home work). 

" I wonder there was no large plan for the wall. A few 
children did not follow the questions about these plans but 
most did, and the general interest in the lesson was most 



Brussels Schools 201 

marked. There was just the right amount of noise and move- 
ment without disorder. The teacher's manner was very calm 
and good. She was young, not more than one-and-twenty at 
a guess. At the top of the house is a capital gymnasium, 
used also for dancing. There are two lessons of gymnastics 
a day of 20 minutes each. We paid a short visit to a room 
where some twenty-five girls were having a lesson in botany. 
Each had a flower before her which she was dissecting. 
Round the room were good diagrams by Wettstein. In 
another room were large animal pictures by Leutemann, some 
of which have found their way to England. But the best 
apparatus of all was that for teaching physiology — skeleton, 
models of eye and ear &c. One would have thought the 
girls must have been intended for doctors, but Miss Staps 
(a friend of the Bradleys who talked excellent English) told 
me she found physiology and anatomy interested the girls 
immensely and drew out the intelligence even of the dullest. 
Physical subjects and science are evidently the strong point of 
the school, and literature seems made nothing of. Nothing 
is learnt by heart. I saw a lesson in heat which I am in- 
competent to criticise. The only other lesson I saw was a 
repetition of viva voce examination in history. The girls were 
about fourteen. Here I found what I remember being struck 
with at Halle, that pupils can be ' put on,' and go on giving 
an account of what they have learnt just as if they were 
reading a book. The part of history was the contest between 
the Popes and Emperors from Barbarossa's time. The girls 
showed great interest, and as they were named they rose and 
spoke away with great fluency. All attended and showed 
disapproval if the girl who ( had the word ' went wrong. I 
think almost all were put on, but some who were good went 
on several times. The attention was excellent throughout the 
lesson, which was a very long one — over an hour. Each girl 
had an atlas open before her, but no other book. I am sur- 
prised the teacher does not record any of the performances 



202 R. H. Quick 

of the pupils. Such a record seems to me very necessary. 
I am going again to hear a language lesson. The foreign 
languages taught are German, English, and Flemish, but a 
pupil must choose two. Each language has two hours a week 
given it, but the Directress agreed this was not enough. She 
said their progress was nothing to boast of." 

Other Brussels Schools 

" 9 May '79. I have just come in from visiting schools 
with M. Buls. First we visited a communal school of 1100 
children. The attendance of the children is regular though 
voluntary, but the age of leaving is low. The clerical party 
will not put off the first Communion beyond twelve, and it 
is a tradition not to go to school after that. Many leave 
even earlier. Parents may withdraw children from religious 
instruction, and the children thus withdrawn have an extra 
gymnastic lesson instead. The material provision at least of 
these Belgian schools is excellent. The school was built 
round an open court. The court was divided down the 
middle and one was the boys' side, the other the girls', but 
this distinction does not seem strictly observed. We first 
saw and heard some girls singing and marching. The time 
and words lent themselves to stamping &c. We then went 
into a classe matemelle, a kind of kindergarten for children 
of five. The girls and boys are not taught together even at 
this age, and the boy-class of these little ones was taught by 
young women. I was very much struck by the vast superiority 
in manner of the women over the men. All the class-rooms 
were admirably fitted up. Each child had a separate desk. 
The maximum number allowed in a class was forty ; but thirty 
seemed the average number. All round the room the wall, 
from the height of 2 ft. to 5 ft. about, was fitted with black- 
board, or in some cases slate. At the top of this was a 
shelf, and over it ran round two bars, to which were hooked 



Brussels Schools 203 

pictures. Every room had its collection of coloured pictures, 
animals &c. To go back to the classes matemclles, a big 
board, fixed at one end of the room, was covered with lines 
dividing it into small chequers. Ail the children's desks had 
a slate let into the surface of them so as to be a fixture and 
flush with the surface of the desk. In this class the slates 
thus let in were lined just like the big board. Patterns were 
drawn on the big board for the children to copy. Every 
desk had a ball fastened to it by a string. The balls were 
of bright colours, one blue, one red &c. The children, 
swinging the balls, sang a pretty ball song. Then the lattes 
(small laths) were given out and the children told to make 
a fan, which they did fairly well. I was shown a good deal 
of Froebel apparatus, but M. Buls said that Froebel was not 
understood in Belgium yet : there was too much teaching in 
the infant schools, and he was endeavouring to change this. 
In the boys' room one of the divisions of the slate round the 
room was taken for a Table d'honneur, and on it appeared 
the names of the children who had done well. We after- 
wards saw a lesson in geography. No book is used by the 
pupils. The subject of the lesson was a journey from Brussels 
to Ghent. On the blackboard were written down the dif- 
ferent ways in which the journey might be made: (1) on 
foot, (2) on horseback, (3) by rail, (4) by water. The class 
had a good-sized (but not good) map of Belgium before it ; 
the teacher asked questions, calling up particular boys to 
point to the map. The lesson was well enough, but not re- 
markable. In one room we found two doctors who are going 
round to examine children's eyesight. 1 was told that the 
number of colour-blind is very large indeed. There is one 
break in the morning's work, and it was a pretty sight to see 
so many children running about. A few organised games. I 
was struck with the low average age. 

" We went afterwards to the Ecole Normale. The teachers 
have two years (14 to 16) of preparatory instruction, then 



204 R. H. Quick 

three years of normal instruction, then one year of trial. 
Daring their three years they have practice in teaching. A 
communal school is connected with the girls' normal school, 
but the lads have to go out to the schools in the town. In 
all the rooms I visited I was struck with the beautiful and 
costly apparatus. The professors of the University give lessons 
in the girls' school. The photographs which the Professor 
used in his lectures on geography were admirable." 



Ecole Modefe (cont.) 

"12 May '79. I asked the Director, M. Sluys, what he 
considered the best book on education, and he said Herbert 
Spencer, past a doubt. The education of the Ecole Modele 
is, like Herbert Spencer, a violent reaction from literary edu- 
cation. The first lesson I saw was given by M. Sluys to some 
very young children, about thirty in number. They were in 
the Museum. To manage a number of children on the floor 
of a Museum full of models &c. and with little free space 
required some art, but these children are capitally drilled and 
each class is as manageable as a regiment. The plan of three- 
quarter hour lessons and one-quarter hour play involves a great 
deal of this drill, and the classes are marched out into the play- 
ground and back, each under its master. If this were not 
smartly done there would be great waste of time. A great 
bell rings some minutes before the end of each lesson. The 
children then in the Museum were fairly orderly. The at- 
tentive and intelligent should have been ranged behind, but 
this was not the case always, and I saw some small ' larks ' 
going on. 

" M. Sluys gave a lesson on shells, which was very good, 
but a little above the children. He had plenty of specimens, 
and whenever he brought out a new shell all eyes were fixed 
upon it. One good point in the lesson : he kept the larger 



Brussels Schools 205 

and more beautiful specimens till the end. The class-master 
was present and took notes — I suppose for recapitulation 
with the children in a subsequent lesson. The children 
were moved about the room without any confusion, and they 
did not seem to have their attention distracted by other ob- 
jects. Near them in one place was a fearful model of a 
man without his skin, so ghastly that it nearly made me 
sick. This lesson of three-quarters of an hour was quite 
enough for children, almost too much. This three-quarters 
of an hour for all lessons and all ages seems a questionable 
plan. Half-an-hour would be long enough for difficult lessons 
with children and an hour not too long for some lessons with 
boys of twelve and over. 

" I next went to an excellent singing lesson. The boys 
(about nine years old) sat in their places mostly and waved 
their hands to mark time. Every variety of exercise was 
gone through with them. The master named notes, Do, sol, 
mi &c, and the children sang them. He then hummed 
notes and the children named them. Then he gave them 
a musical dictee. He sang a tune and the children were 
supposed to write the score in books they had with ruled 
lines. Many failed in this. Then they stood on the floor 
beside their desks and sang and marched, marking time with 
their feet. Then they sang from notes Danhauser's Solfege. 
The attention of the boys was excellent, though, with the 
exception of the march and another song from memory, they 
did nothing but grind steadily all the lesson. One exercise 
was writing a phrase of music on the board and then calling 
on one boy to sing it forward, the next to sing it backward, 
and so on. 

" I afterwards saw some drawing. Here things were not 
made interesting. Geometrical drawing is the only thing 
allowed, and a lesson in it is given to each boy every day. 
They have to make a solid of some kind in cardboard and 
then draw it in different ways. Free-hand drawing, M. Sluys 



206 R. H. Quick 

says, has been given up entirely as unsuited to primary 
education. 

" In the afternoon I saw what is called a dictation lesson 
in geometry. The children were ranged round the room, 
each provided with a bit of chalk. The Director then dic- 
tated. 'In the left-hand corner of the slate six inches from 
the bottom and three inches from the left-hand division make 
a point and call it A.' Then at a given sign all the children 
faced about, each to the wall-slate appropriated to him, and 
marked the point. Further directions were given out one by 
one till a square was completed. The plan of wall-slates has 
great advantages. The master from his desk can look round 
the room and see what everyone has done. It is a good thing, 
too, to accustom the children to do things on a large scale. 
I dare say work of this sort would prepare the way for 
geometry. Each child has a measure, and has to verify with 
it the figure he has drawn. But the teaching was rather dry 
and severe for such very small children. M. Sluys is evidently 
something of a driver, or at least of a drill sergeant, but he 
does seem to get the minds to march. 

" We then had an excellent lesson to the youngest class 
on the plan of the building. A large and well-executed plan 
was set before the children in the preau. A child with a 
pointer showed the way in from the boulevard, and pointed 
the doors, staircases &c. Being asked what one of the stair- 
cases led up to he couldn't say, so he was sent to run up the 
staircase and see. As he went on with the plan one boy was 
sent to this point, another to another, to show they knew what 
was going on. A capital lesson." 

A criticism of the Ecole Modele 

"15 May '79. Bonn. I have to-day written to M. Buls, as 
he asked me, to let him have suggestions about the Ecole 
.Modele. My main criticism is this : — Your school repre- 



Jesuit Schools 207 

sents the reaction against the old literary training, which for 
children was too often a verbal training only. The subject 
of the old teaching was the mind of man as it expressed 
itself in books. The reaction turns from this subject and 
turns to the material world and studies its phenomena and 
its laws. But this reaction seems to me in danger of falling 
into an error similar to that of the old teaching. The great 
books were not written for children, and so the subject of 
children's instruction was not suited for children. They had 
to learn Virgil and Cicero, or else the grammar required for 
reading Virgil and Cicero. The child-mind does not (and 
I think cannot) look at nature in the scientific way. The 
subject of instruction will therefore be unsuited for children, 
if it is science or the grammar of science. Children may 
indeed be taught to know about things : but there is, I 
think, some danger of this instruction being made too scien- 
tific in form. 

" Unless I am much mistaken, I have here hit on the 
main blot of these schools. They appeal too exclusively to 
the child's intellect, and they exercise the intellect too ex- 
clusively on the physical world." 

Jesuit Schools 

" The great thing observable in the Jesuit Schools, as 
throughout the organisation of the Society, is the economy 
of force. This was attained by unnatural limitations. First 
as to the object : everything was to be directed to increase 
the influence of the Society. The school system, then, was 
to be constructed with that object. In those trained for 
Jesuits not the whole man was to be cultivated, but just so 
much of him as the Society wanted. The pupils not in- 
tended for the Society were to be trained so as to be at- 
tached to the Society and under its influences. Their schools 
had to be popular. They therefore were to give gratis the 



2o8 R. H. Quick 

best instruction then obtainable in the subjects of instruc- 
tion then most in request. Economy of force is seen in the 
organisation of the school. The Rector was to give unity 
by not being attached to any part of the school, but by 
regulating the whole and seeing that each master did his 
appointed work. The economy was shown in the concentra- 
tion of the masters on their work. They were not to study 
for themselves ; all their time and thought were to be given 
to their pupils. They were to make their progress the one 
thing ever kept in view. The master kept his pupils all the 
way up the school, and thus thoroughly studied their character 
and economised his influence. 

" I should doubt how far this plan would be found to 
work. My own experience is that one's relations with a boy 
and one's feelings towards him vary very- much from time 
to time. At first one's relations are very pleasant or quite 
the reverse ; the former being much the more common case. 
But the boy who at first never meets one without a smile 
can't go on grinning week after week, month after month. 
So one's relations speedily become more official, and we 
pass one another in the street with fixed countenance and 
the regulation salute. Then something goes wrong, some 
lessons are badly prepared, some exercise carelessly written. 
We come down on our young friend and relations be- 
come somewhat strained. Occasionally we detect him in a 
serious fault, say a deception of which we should have sup- 
posed him incapable. In this case our feelings undergo an 
entire change, and we should like to have nothing more to 
do with him. But by and by this phase too passes away, 
and perhaps a series of others succeed; At times we re- 
member with a kind of astonishment our intercourse with a 
boy in times past. Is it possible that we were ever on the 
most friendly footing with so-and-so, who, though we have 
never quarrelled with him, looks upon us as 'the enemy' 
and gives a mental cave whenever he catches sight of us? 



Jesuit Schools 209 

Changes, too, in the opposite direction are not uncommon. 
A fellow we have had a good deal of trouble with at one 
time comes to a sort of understanding with us and we jog 
along comfortably enough. J. A. C. once defended fort- 
nightly reports as against monthly on the ground that we are 
always influenced by what has come last, and therefore two 
reports in the month would be fairer to a boy than one. 

" To return from this digression to the Jesuits. They 
further economised force by concentrating the attention of 
their pupils on few subjects. Latin was the backbone of 
their teaching. Thoroughness, repetition, emulation, delation 
— these were their watchwords. 

" The last two introduce an interesting question of school 
life. The masters are and must be the masters. The Jesuits 
seem to have recognised this to some extent, for the Father 
Confessor of each boy was, though a Jesuit, never a master 
of the school. One of the great facts of a boy's school life 
is that he belongs to a body composed of the boys of the 
school, and this body is not only distinct from, but also more 
or less antagonistic to, the body made up by the masters. 
There is commonly the most friendly feeling between the 
two bodies (I am told there is also between the profession 
of thieves and the police)." 



2io R. H. Quick 



BOYS AND MASTERS 

" Work to boys cannot be made as interesting as play. 
In our efforts to make work interesting to boys we must 
remember that, even when we are successful, we shall still 
require to use some pressure to get our study properly at- 
tended to, especially in preparation. The boys will like the 
work, but they will not like it better than play. I have oc- 
casionally proved this by the following experiment. I have 
been reading aloud something that the boys liked to hear, 
and they were listening apparently with rapt attention. The 
play-hour has come, and I have said : ' Those who wish can 
leave. I will go on reading and any can stay who like.' I 
have expected most boys to stay, and perhaps not a boy has 
done so. They liked the book well, but play better." 



Collective punishments and reprimands 

" I have often felt that it was a mistake to reproach whole 
bodies of boys. A boy does not feel culpability which he 
shares with a number of others, but every individual of a 
body attacked feels resentment and takes the resentment for 
public spirit. Chesterfield's advice to his son is shrewd : 
' Never attack whole bodies of any kind. Individuals forgive 
sometimes, but bodies and societies never do.' " 



Danger of general punishments 

"15. 12. 76. The other day there was a fall-out between 
two of my boys, and of course the school took sides (or rather 
a side, as generally happens) in the matter. Yesterday the 
bullying spirit broke loose in a disgusting way. There has 
been an annoyance in the house that I have determined to 



Manner in Classroom 2 1 1 

stop, and as speaking to the boys about it had no effect, I 
have interdicted football for the present. Now these punish- 
ments of the whole school have a great danger in them. 
The boys are sure to settle on some unfortunate, probably 
a weak, unpopular boy, who is either innocent or not a bit 
worse than the rest, and wreak their vengeance on this victim. 
This has happened in the present instance. The boys waited 
in a gang to set upon one boy when he came out. He had 
some notion of this and kept behind, so a boy was sent to 
entice him out. When this failed they all came back and 
dragged him out and the noise brought me on the scene, so 
I discovered what had been going on." 

Taking a boy's word 

"5 May '77. The Spectator last Saturday had a letter 
from Lake running down Arnold's plan of always taking a 
boy's word, even when appearances were against him. This 
doctrine he gibbets as the figment of ' imputed truthfulness.' 
'A schoolmaster' (Merriman, I afterwards discovered) answers 
him in to-day's Spectator. According to him the imputed 
truthfulness is a mistake only when it is a sham. We are 
bound to give boys the credit for speaking the truth unless 
it is certain or, from previous character, very probable that 
they are lying. The point is full of interest, perhaps of a 
larger range than the scholastic. St Paul says, ' Love be- 
lieveth all things.' How far ought love to sway the intellect 
in weighing probabilities? " 

Maimer in Classroom 

" Young people are very sensitive to manner, and their 
teachers, who naturally treat them sans /aeon, often do harm 
by a harsh and unsympathetic manner. It's all very well to 
say that the teacher should always have a kind manner, but 



212 R. H. Quick 

at times, when one feels irritable, a kind manner seems im- 
possible, or at best a piece of hypocrisy. When one is not 
in the best of spirits there is some difficulty in keeping order 
without a repressive manner. Indeed, a sympathetic manner 
draws out such a flood of communications of one kind and 
another that it seems dangerous to the discipline of the school- 
room. Then again, the constant annoyances of finding work 
ill done (especially of the ' Please, Sir, I've lost my book,' 
and ' Please, Sir, I could not do my work because I left the 
sums here when I went home ' &c. &c.) are very worrying, 
and one naturally shows annoyance in one's manner. By 
custom one learns to avoid any breaking out of temper, but 
the master feels an undercurrent of sulkiness and the boys 
know this better than he does." 

A p7'agmatical pupil 

"22 Oct. '78. Yesterday I was worried by my friend 
E. J.'s incessantly interfering about place-taking in class, 
even when he was not affected by the change. Most people 
don't trouble themselves if they are not personally interested, 
and most boys are ready to give the class-teacher credit for 
being able and willing to do the right thing. But E. J.'s 
mind is very restless, and he considers its decisions infallible. 
It is rather hard to know what to do in a case of this sort. 
There is something very irritating in constant intellectual 
opposition from a boy just ten years old, and one feels in- 
clined to break down the outward show of opposition by 
force ; but this would only produce a feeling of suffering 
from injustice, and the opposition would be all the stronger 
within. One might elaborately prove to him that he was 
mistaken, but this would take too much time and make him 
seem of too much importance. One has in E. J. the rest- 
less, active, wideawake mind which one professes to desire, 
but one wants to make him understand what a little way he 



A Schoolmaster s Manner 213 

can see : in other words, to teach him childlike humility, 
and this, when it does not come by nature, one can hardly 
teach. Yesterday I said to him : ' You evidently think you 
can manage the class better than I. Come and see.' So I 
made him come to my place, and I sat down in his. This 
produced a laugh against him, but I don't expect it shook his 
self-conceit." 

Law-givers should have good memories 

'" Liars should have good memories,' so should law-givers 
where there is no lex scripta. Schoolmasters are apt to give 
edicts on the spur of the moment, and so to lay down bad, 
impossible, or unnecessary rules. Rules of the first kind the 
law-giver lets drop, those of the second drop of themselves, 
and those of the last are commonly neglected. But the law- 
giver should never give an edict without thinking it over, and 
he should carefully keep it recorded on paper if he can't keep 
it in his head. If change seems needed, he should announce 
it. No harm is done by repealing, but great harm by allowing 
disobedience." 

A Schoolmaster'' s Manner 

" 1. 2. 86. 'There is but one safe basis of courtesy in the 
schoolroom, and that consists in a genuine love for children.' 
C. W. Bardeen. 

"This seems to me the sort of platitude which sounds 
well, but is useless. Nobody denies that love for children is 
the one grand requisite for benefiting them. But rudeness 
to the young does not spring from ill-will' or even indiffer- 
ence. One of the most important things in dealing with the 
young is ?nan?ier, but if anyone thinks that because he cares 
for his pupils his manner will be always kind to them, he 
is considerably mistaken. I have known a mother of even 
more than ordinary lovingness and also more than average 



214 R. H. Quick 

good temper, yet, worn out by her child's fretfulness, speak 
rudely to it. If a mother's love will not always ensure a 
kind manner, most certainly no other love will. 

" Every young teacher who cares for his pupils is at first 
very kind in his manner, and could hardly be otherwise. The 
kind manner continues perhaps when it is no longer quite 
' natural,' i.e. it stands a fair amount of strain ; but sooner or 
later it will give way. Nurses sometimes tell a child that it 
would try the temper of an angel, and it's quite true. So 
will a form of boys at times, especially at the close of a 
long day's work, carried on perhaps under very unfavourable 
conditions of space and atmosphere. Perhaps the most ordi- 
nary and the easiest course is to take refuge in an official 
manner, a manner neither kiud nor unkind but colourless, 
and on that account unvarying. 

" It often surprises friends who, having known us ' at 
home' (as schoolboys say), come upon us with pupils, to 
find that our professional manner is quite different from our 
private manner. Well, those who have spent much time in 
the schoolroom know that a somewhat professional manner 
can hardly be avoided. One thinks of the story of the men 
crying ' O' clo' ! ' We can't go crying ' Old clothes ' all day 
and every day, and like the mild Jew we may rejoin : ' Just 
you try the experiment of schoolroom for a single day and 
you will find your manners get abbreviated like the street 
cry.' But the difficult problem of how to behave to boys 
is not solved by our falling into or adopting a professional 
manner. The manner is nothing but a mask. If the boys 
take it for our face, they think us uglier than we really are. 
If they see it is a mask, they mistrust us and wonder what 
is behind it." 

A Roland for an Oliver 

" 16. ii. 86. Arthur Llewelyn Davies is taking a form at 
Eton. He says the boys are very conversational. He is too 



Birmingham Boys 215 

strong a man to be humbugged, I think, but this phase of 
his pupils looks to an old hand rather doubtful. He tells 
me that he scored off his boys on one occasion. He came 
in late and a boy said, ' You're late, Sir, that's not setting 
us a good example.' To whom Arthur : ' You're quite right, 
and you'll have to punish me by keeping me here five minutes 
over the hour.'" 

Birmingham Boys 

" 16. 2. 80. When I was at Birmingham, Vardy told me 
that he found the physique of the boys much weaker than 
that of London boys. The boys at Birmingham must be 
very different to those I have known. It is easy to get 
them to work, but not to play. I asked about a lending- 
library and found that there was no demand for ' play- 
books.' The boys seem to have no imagination, and don't 
care for fiction. Vardy finds Sir W. Scott little known and 
not procurable at the boys' homes. The other day Vardy 
advised a boy to do less school- work and to read some 
Dickens or Thackeray. The boy said he was just reading 
a book of his father's which he liked very much. Vardy 
asked more about it and discovered it was Moseley on the 
Mi?-acks" 



216 R. H. Quick 

EXAMINATIONS 

Examination Papers a teacher's diary 

" I lately looked out all my old examination papers to get 
them bound up. I then saw how much one might make of 
one's own examination papers. One's practice has been too 
much to set them in a hurry and at random. The right 
plan is to have settled types of questions and to take notes 
of suitable questions under each head as one goes on studying 
the subject. As it is, I find that examination papers give me 
a kind of sketch, though imperfect, of what my teaching has 
been and of the things I have chiefly dwelt upon, and thus 
they form a sort of autobiography or journal." 

Futility of Competitive Examinations 

" I have been looking at two papers headed ' Civil Service 
Examination. History and Philosophy of Education.' If the 
object of the examination is simply to find out whether the 
examined know anything of the subject, then such papers 
may do well enough, but when the examined must be placed 
'in order of merit,' the whole thing becomes a sham. I have 
spent many years in studying the history of education (more 
years than most of these examinees have spent months), but 
I could not do at all well in the papers set. I have not the 
% knowledge in the right form for scoring marks in a three- 
hours paper." 

Theory of Examinations 

"There seems some difficulty about the Elementary 
Scholarships at Liverpool, for which I have just been setting 
papers. The object, as I understand it, is to find out the 
cleverest boys. But the examination is to be in certain fixed 



Examination Papers 2 1 7 

subjects, and when I go with my papers to Abbott he tells 
me that these are not fair papers in the subjects, for you 
want to find out whether the subjects have been well taught. 
Now here is an entirely new object given for the examina- 
tion. My object is to find out who is capable of learning, 
Abbott's object is to find out who has learnt. But some 
one might say there is no practical difference, for the boy 
who has learnt best in the past will be most capable of 
learning in the future. But this is not a right assumption. 
It would not be right if the boys had been all under one 
master, for the having learnt proves only fair industry and 
intelligence and fair carrying power. These are good things 
in their way, but a fair examination in the subjects might 
leave the geniuses quite unnoticed. And these difficulties 
are much increased when the boys have been under different 
masters. A fair examination in the subjects thus becomes 
an examination of the masters rather than of the boys. And 
directly Scripture, Geography, History are studied for exami- 
nation they are at once ruined for Education. Examination 
in these subjects seems to me based on an enormous fallacy. 
Everybody who has read his Bible properly knows who was 
the father of the twelve patriarchs, who succeeded Solomon 
&c. &c. There can be no doubt about this ; but its converse 
may be by no means true, and yet the examination system 
assumes the converse, viz. that if a person knows these facts 
he has read his Bible properly." 



A symposium on Examination Papers 

" 12 Ap. '78. Last week I had the London U. U. 1 dinner 
here, and a discussion on examination papers. Storr was 
strongly opposed to irresponsible examining and thought all 
sorts of injustice arose from the carelessness of untrained 

1 A small debating society of London schoolmasters. 



218 R. H. Quick 

examiners when left to themselves. Abbott said we had to 
consider two things, (i) How we should examine our own 
boys. (2) How we should wish our boys to be examined 
by outsiders. He said far too much time was lost in the 
attempt to secure perfect accuracy. A good deal should be 
left to the examiner's impressions. One thing the examina- 
tion should test is judgment. If a boy spends half the time 
allowed for the paper in doing one or two of ten questions, 
he ought not to be marked high, for he must be a silly 
person. The plan of putting marks to questions may be a 
guide to the fulness with which questions should be an- 
swered. Abbott then described a plan by which he ex- 
amines 100 boys in three hours. He reads out a number of 
questions admitting of definite answers, — e.g. Put into Latin 
' I have the book my brother gave me.' The boys must write 
at once and no correction is allowed. Then boys change 
papers and correct as the master dictates. Papers are handed 
back to the writer and appeals are allowed. The examiner 
takes the marks as the boys give them in. Most of Abbott's 
viva voce sentences are catches, and he asks ' Hands up those 
who have got so and so.' Thus he sees at a glance whether 
the form generally is in a good or bad state. Abbott has a 
great notion of viva voce examination. 

" George Warr started the notion of marking difficulties 
only and cutting the rest of the paper. This, he said, was 
the best plan in examining low standards. Hallam protested 
against this plan as lazy and unfair. Everybody agreed that 
the papers should be looked over laterally, not vertically." 

An Examination Paper in set books 

"14 June '80. I have read Locke and Arnold and made 
up questions as I read. This gives one a great choice of 
questions, and is the best way of making a paper. Of course 
one asks about important points only, so that these questions 



Examination Papers 219 

are equivalent to notes of one's reading. The rest of the sub- 
ject I have never studied with a view to questions, so those I 
have asked were not altogether satisfactory. 

" I have this morning gone to work and answered the 
paper (a three hours' paper) in just over two hours and a half. 
I think every examiner should do this with important papers. 
I'm afraid the paper is somewhat too hard. What I found 
was this : when a definite piece of knowledge is wanted, it 
can be given straight away ; but if the question needs thought, 
it is a much less fair test. Of course the questions were to 
some extent thoughts of my own, so sometimes I could re- 
produce my thoughts, thus having an unfair advantage ; but 
when I had set questions without thinking out an answer, I 
found that I wanted more time than that allowed, and the 
least attempt to hurry thought stops thought altogether, mine 
at least, which goes along like a snail, and like a snail shuts 
up if I give it a push. I shrewdly suspect that, if I had to 
mark the answers to my own paper, I should not give full 
marks or anything like full marks to several of my answers. 
In the information questions the candidates will perhaps do 
better than I have done. This might easily happen. I set 
things they ought to know only on the assumption that they 
have prepared the subject for examination. E.g. I ask, 'What 
are the chief recommendations Luther gives in his " Letter to 
the Town-Councillors of Germany " ?' Now I have read this 
letter, but haven't got it up. If I had been reading for ex- 
amination, I should have taken an epitome of the letter and 
got it up ; so the candidates may do better than I. Indeed, 
I shall have to read the letter again to see I have missed no 
point. . . . 

"This question touches a vital point in the subject. Ex- 
aminers often ask about unimportant things from a notion 
that if unimportant things are known, important things must 
be known a fortiori. But it seems to me that asking about 
trifles tends to encourage the wrong kind of study. In studying 



220 R. H. Quick 

we want to fasten on the important things and to forget the un- 
important.''' 

Cambridge Teachers' Examination 

" 28. 6. 80. On Saturday night I looked over some of the 
Advanced questions. The first question was : ' Education 
should be according to Nature. Which Reformers insisted 
on this, and what did they mean in each case ? ' The an- 
swers are mostly very limp. The poor girls seem to think 
they will be passed for much writing, but their verbiage only 
shows that they are in a fog. Most of them simply try to 
reproduce what they have read, and think it must be right 
if it is like the book. One candidate, giving Locke as an 
advocate of education according to Nature, tells me that he 
brought up two Earls of Shaftesbury. Looking through these 
papers is sickening work. All the candidates seem to have 
caught at the same words and to use them without meaning. 
Poor girls ! they have taken great pains to get up lists of 
names. Apropos of Nature, I am told that Froebel main- 
tained there were instincts, ' those of activity, agriculture, 
transformation, sociability and religion.' As I get this list 
more than once, I suppose it comes from some book or lec- 
ture. I am rather puzzled by this new use of words. Perhaps 
this list is itself an ' instinct ' ; it is certainly a ' curiosity.' How 
is one to mark an answer which begins ' Comenius planted 
the standard of education a step further into the realm of 
Nature ' ? 

" For the most part I looked over the papers question by 
question, the only fair plan, but when the numbers are great 
the waste of time in sorting and changing papers is a serious 
drawback. 

" It must make a good deal of difference to candidates 
which plan is adopted. If one looks straight on, one's 
marking is affected by impressions made in previous an- 



Cambridge Teachers Examinations 221 

swers. One gets a notion say — this is an intelligent person 
— and the words which in themselves are ambiguous are sup- 
posed to mean the right thing. Or perhaps one is disgusted 
by some bad blunder, and one then takes a depreciatory view 
to the end. So the candidate in this case should be careful 
to put down nothing but what he is certain of. In the other 
method one rarely has any notion of the person whose an- 
swer one is reading, so a candidate can take shots with im- 
punity. As very few examiners give negative marks, it often 
pays to answer every question somehow rather than to give 
more careful and better answers to a few questions. Of 
course if the examiner makes, as I have, a list of the ques- 
tions with the marks each candidate has got for each, he 
sees how the marks have been obtained, and he may for a 
pass allow a few good answers to have more value than a 
greater number scraped together from many questions ; but 
when the numbers examined are large each stands or falls, I 
fancy, by his total. As to brevity, of course it is a great 
mistake to put down anything irrelevant. It disgusts the 
examiner, and in effect gets a negative mark. But on the 
other hand I am not sure that brevity pays as well as it 
ought to pay. The examiner has some difficulty in believing 
that a question answered briefly is answered fully. To con- 
sider the point and to weigh the force of every word would 
require more time than he can afford, so he is tempted to 
cut down the marks. So if the answer is fairly sensible, the 
examiner is apt to mark partly for its length." 

Cambridge Teachers' Examination answers 

"2 July '81. I think there is a better set in this year 
than last, but the Advanced Question was poorly done. Of 
those who took 'The growth of schools for the people from 
the Reformation to our own day,' only one spoke of Scotland 
and John Knox. 



222 R. H. Quick 

" I have just finished looking over the question on 
Ascham's method of teaching a foreign language. I am 
very weary of the same thing, often the same words, coming 
over and over. They remember details, but don't catch the 
important point. Most take Ratich to compare with Ascham, 
but they don't observe the difference — that a page would take 
A.'s pupils a long time to get over, while the pupils of R. 
were rushed through the book straight on end before they read 
the beginning a second time. I ask for a comparison of the 
curriculum planned by Sturm for the Strassburg Gymnasium 
and that of our public schools, and I find that many have 
crammed up (I suppose from Barnard) all the work set by 
Sturm for his ten classes. They have gone through all this 
wretched unprofitable grind, yet most miss the essential point 
that Sturm sought to revive Latin as a language for modern 
eloquence. Any amount of memory work, but no thought. 
As I go on looking over papers I get to doubt whether this 
is a good subject for examining in. 

" An odd thing cropped up at the examiners' meeting. 
We were told to make ioo the maximum for each paper, 
but nothing was said as to the number of marks for a pass. 
The notion in my mind had been that half marks were the 
minimum, but the other examiners had thought of a third. So 
our marks really meant quite different things." 

Looking over Froebel Society Examination Papers 

" 17. 8. 81. I have remarked before that the setter of a 
paper should always work out his own paper and time himself. 
He will often find himself puzzled to answer his own questions 
so as to obtain full marks, and possibly he will find that even 
he has not thought the matter out so as to be able to give a 
neat and condensed answer. Hence he will often modify and 
improve his paper. But even then he will be unconscious of 
the defects that become conspicuous enough directly he begins 



Cambridge Teachers Examinations 223 

to look at the answers of others. Generally speaking, he will 
find that the question opens a larger area than he intended ; 
sometimes that it admits of some simple answer that really 
misses or eludes the point he had in his mind." 

Examinations a game at ecarte 

" Examination is like a game at ecarte. The examiner 
leads off and we look into our hand to find a card by 
which we may win the trick. It is a game of skill and 
chance combined, and our success depends chiefly, no doubt, 
on our hands, but also in part on our play. Whatever the 
result, however, the cards are done with when the game is 
played out, and we never trouble ourselves to remember 
them." 

Examinations prevent thinking 

"I am to-day (10. 5. 83) analysing my lecture on 
Montaigne. He is of course strong against second-hand in- 
formation and our use of other people's judgments. I wish 
the present generation would listen to him, but the exami- 
nation craze gives preponderance to mere memory work. 
J. R. Seeley told me the other day that he found examiners 
were mostly intolerant of any but received opinions. They 
gave more marks for what men had got out of books than 
for any crude notions of their own. Lately a candidate in 
the History Tripos gave expression to his own thoughts in- 
stead of repeating the conventional judgments of historians. 
The examiners were quite put out, and, with the exception 
of Seeley, wanted to give him a very low place." 

A modern MangnalVs Questions 

" 2. 4. 89. The Comprehensive Examiner, by David Clark, 
Headmaster of Board School, Dudley (Blackie). 



224 R. H. Quick 

" No doubt our Board Schools are now like our middle- 
class schools, turning out young people ' very widely misin- 
formed/ and these examination papers would suit them to 
a t, but it seems to me the height of folly to cram children 
with totally uninteresting and lifeless information. I look 
through these papers and find none that I could floor after 
working in the schoolroom as boy and man for fifty years. 
1 By how many people is the English language now probably 
spoken?' 'Who was Aristotle, and what did he say of the 
British Islands?' I don't know what Aristotle said about 
the British Islands, and as his knowledge of them was about 
the same as the young Briton's knowledge of him now is, 
what he said is not of much consequence. ' What may we 
learn from the volcanic appearance of the Moon?' Is this 
geography?" 



Comments on an Examination Paper on Shakspere 

[Merchant of Venice 

Introductory Paper 

i. Why should Shakspere have chosen this name? Whom 
do you consider the principal character in the play? 

2. Antonio. ' In sooth I know not why I am so sad.' 
Romeo. ' My bosom's lord sits lightly in his throne.' 

Compare these two lines, and show how Shakspere gener- 
ally treats omens and presentiments. 

3. State what you know of the two stories combined in 
this play. 

4. With what names in English Literature is Venice con- 
nected? 

5. Discuss Shakspere's treatment of the Jewish character. 
Sketch the history of the Jews in England. 



An Examination Paper in Shakspere 225 

6. " It is against nature for money to beget money." 

Bacon. 
Illustrate from this play, and account for the prejudice of 
Shakspere's time against money-lenders. 

7. To what period of Shakspere's life does this play be- 
long? Note any inconsistencies, and account for them. 

8. ' The Merchant of Venice is a merchant of no other 
city in the world.' Illustrate. 

9. Why should the play be called a comedy rather than a 
tragedy ? Point out any comic scenes in Shakspere's tragedies.] 



" It is most important to get some improvement in the art 
of examining. Butler says that the entrance examinations at 
Harrow have tremendous effect on Preparatory Schools. No 
doubt. And the examiner always has a great effect on the 
teaching. He, in fact, in the end directs what is to be 
specially observed and dwelt upon. Therefore the examiner 
should be very careful in using his power, and all random 
questioning is pernicious. The great thing he should ask 
himself about every question is : Is this a good kind of 
question? Will it lead to the observing of the right kind 
of thing? And he should have his types of questions settled 
before he goes to work to set a paper. He will then work 
more easily and with much better result than if he puts down 
just the questions that come into his head. 

" I look at an Oxford Local in the Scholastic Register for 
March '78 (whether Senior or Junior is not stated). In the 
Introductory Paper on the ' Merchant of Venice ' (time about 
1 \ hours) there are nine questions. 1 

" What answer the man expects to the first part of the 
first question I can't imagine. It would be as reasonable, as 

1 The University had nothing to do with the paper criticised. It was 
set as a help to candidates preparing for the Oxford Locals, and the foolish 
examiner here hung and quartered (the truth will out) was myself. 
Q 



226 R. H. Quick 

far as I can make out, to ask : Why was Shakspere called 
William? The second part of the question is good, but it 
would be better if it were not answerable by a single word. 
One boy would say ' Antonio/ another ' Shylock,' a third 
' Portia.' Should they not be asked to give some account 
of the selected character throughout the play? 

" Question 2 might be a good subject for an essay to 
be written by undergraduates, who could consult their 
Shakspere and spend a week about it. In its position here 
it is ridiculous. 

" Question 3 requires information which would be posi- 
tively harmful to the young student of the play. You might 
as well try to make your pupils appreciate Turner's pictures 
by giving them information about his use of cobalt, burnt 
sienna &c. Nay, this, if equally absurd, would be less harm- 
ful, for your pupils would of course ignore all this informa- 
tion when they looked at the pictures. But when you have 
insisted on their studying Shaksperian raw materials, you have 
done all you can to spoil his plays for them. An adult critic 
may no doubt find pleasure in observing the exquisite art with 
which the materials are worked up, but this sort of pleasure 
is impossible before the critical faculties are developed. The 
only result of their cramming the two stories will be to turn 
the play inside out, so to speak, and show all the stitches 
instead of the effect the author meant to produce. Unless 
the young student has the art of forgetting which Themistocles 
longed for, he will no longer be able to look at the play as 
a whole, but will constantly be thinking whether he is listening 
to one story or another. 

" Question 4 is quite absurd as a question to young 
people. If they have an answer for it, it must be a 
crammed answer. 

"The same is true of question 5. A history of the Jews 
in England in the eighteenth part of ii hours ! It ought 
therefore to be written in five minutes ! " 



Thought and Words 227 



* Savoir par cozur ii'est pas s avoir 

" This I take to mean that when a thought has thoroughly 
entered the mind, it shakes off the words by which it was 
conveyed thither. Therefore, so long as the words are indis- 
pensable, the thought is not known. All examiners are rightly 
suspicious of answers 'in the words of the book.' 

" A friend of mine at Cambridge took down Sir James 
Stephen's lectures on history, and as the paper set after- 
wards was on the subject of the lectures, he gave Sir James 
pretty well his own words back again. What answers, he 
thought, could be more satisfactory? But Sir James took a 
different view. My friend got no distinguishing mark for 
history, and accordingly went to Sir James and complained. 
Sir James admitted that all his answers had been right, and 
that he had been obliged to give him high marks, but he 
had thought him unworthy of distinction because ' he showed 
no knowledge of history.' This was an odd case. The ex- 
aminer asks a question and gets a perfectly satisfactory answer, 
yet he refuses to recognise it as a good answer because he 
himself furnished it, and so it gave no proof that the examinee 
had learnt from other sources. I think my friend might have 
maintained that the examiner, having got all he asked for, 
should have given all he could give, and that the examinee, 
in showing thorough knowledge of the lectures, had not shown 
ignorance of history unless the lectures were wrong. 1 So with 
the savoir par cozur ; if the words are right words, the mind 
may have the thought and the words too. There are cases 
in which the thought inevitably suggests the words, which, 

1 The examiner was clearly right in refusing honours to. a candidate 
who showed no proof of original thought or reading, and, like the un- 
profitable servant in the parable, paid the lecturer back in his own coin 
without interest. R. H. Q. is, perhaps consciously, playing the advocatus 
diaboli. 



228 R. H. Quick 

if they did not convey it, still seem to give it the aptest 
expression. E.g. when one feels how powerless external 
things are in themselves to affect us, one hears a voice within 

saying : 

1 We may not hope from outward forms to win 
The power and the life whose fountains are within. 1 

And when one thinks of the bloodshed we see among animals, 
the voice says : ' Nature red in tooth and claw with ravin.' 

" Proverbs, too, are an instance of the tendency to link 
a particular thought to a particular mode of expression. 
Thoughts that are part of the mind must then be independent 
of any special form of utterance, but they may, and often do, 
ally themselves with special forms." 

Work for small boys must be easy 

" The great secret of success with small boys is to keep 
the work very easy, go forward very slowly, and give the 
boys plenty to do under the master's eye. With older boys, 
if they find the work easy, they are sure to despise it and do 
it ill. I lately began the exercises in the 'Grammaire des 
Grammaires ' with some boys, one of whom (a painstaking 
lad) had done a good deal of French, while most of the 
others had done little or none. This boy's exercises were 
nearly the worst of the lot. But small boys at the least 
difficulty throw up the sponge, and the chief difficulty in 
teaching them is to find subject-matter easy enough and to 
work it long enough." 

School wrinkles, (i) A spelling match 

"I gave the sides some time to prepare lists. Each boy 
had to bring a column of 20 words (the words should be 
numbered), and then I asked the head of one side the first 



School Wrinkles 229 

word of his aemulus and vice versa. This I kept on till one 
was floored, when I went on to the second pair, and so on. 
The words had to be selected from certain pages of Southey's 
Nelson^ 

(2) Punishments 

" Abbott told me his plan for making boys register their 
own punishments. If he sets a boy such and such a task 
for such and such a day, he asks for a cheque from the 
boy and the boy at once gives up a piece of paper with 
the amount due written on it and his name. These are 
filed, and it is the boy's business to see the cheque torn 
up when the task is given in. The great advantage of the 
plan is that the boy can never say he did not understand, 
and the master is relieved from all trouble in demanding 
the task." 

(3) Neatness 

" Another plan of Abbott's is to make boys write ' Marks 
for neatness ' at the top of all their exercises, and these marks 
are awarded first. If a boy fails to get any marks for neat- 
ness, that exercise cannot score. The great benefit of this 
is that it keeps neatness always in the minds both of boys 
and masters." 

Repetition of Poetry 

"About repeating with good emphasis, &c, the boys will 
never go right without some leading. They should not get 
their first impressions from the book. When a piece has 
been chosen for learning, the teacher might read it to the 
class every day for the week previous to their setting to 
work upon it. He might ask questions about its meaning, 
the words, allusions, &c, and after the first time or two try 
to examine in it by ellipses (stopping and asking next word 



230 R. H. Quick 

or line), which would test the attention of the class. In the 
same way the master may test how far pieces already learned 
have been retained by reading them over and calling on boy 
after boy to go on whenever he makes a stop." 

The danger of teaching too high 

"19 April '77. There are all sorts of pitfalls in the 
teacher's way, and unless he has crystallised into a routinist 
and so attained to a ' repose which ever is the same/ he 
must be constantly on the lookout or he will tumble. The 
most persistently besetting sin of the teacher who likes his 
work is the danger of teaching what interests him, though 
the subject, or rather that phase of the subject, is not the 
most suitable for his pupils. 

" As I have two or three very intelligent boys, I am now 
much tempted in this direction. The boys are of a very 
inquiring turn of mind, and I am very anxious to exercise 
their intelligence. Consequently I am apt to break through 
into parts of subjects which interest me and which are very 
clear to me, but which can hardly be taken in without more 
training and greater grasp of mind than boys possess. 

" In Arithmetic all but two understand much that no other 
boys of their age ever hear of. They not only are great in 
factors, multiples, &c, but they are familiar with powers, in- 
dices, minus quantities and brackets. They take these things 
in very well, but of course there is great danger of their getting 
muddled, and when the teaching has not been properly ar- 
ranged in a system beforehand, there may be here and there 
lacunae which might give difficulty later on. The ordinary 
school plan of giving the ' rule ' with, or more commonly 
without, explanation, and then setting a lot of examples as 
like as Dutch cheeses, does nothing for the intelligence, and 
if the question in examination is not set quite under one of 
the book categories, the boys are floored. Still I expect I 



Elementary Latin 231 

push matters too far the other way. I have been working 
vulgar fractions for some weeks now. I keep my boys to 
fractions with one denominator for a long time, and try to 
get the conception of the fraction old and familiar to them 
before I introduce them to the Protean stage. Perhaps one 
might convince them that \ = -§ as follows : 

3. — JL nr !_ii_|_JL — 3__l_3_-i-_3 . 1 — 3. . 2 6 

3 — 9 ui 3 ' 3 ' 3 — 9 ^ 9 ^ 9 ' * 3 — 9 * ' 3 — 9' 

" But boys don't care about reasoning on such things. 
They like rather to feel than to see the thing is so. I want 
them to get familiar with the fraction before I play tricks 
with it. I prefer their leaving the factors as if they were 
letters, not figures. The eye then sees the truth, and that is 
a great help." 

Teaching of elementary Latin 

"3 Apr. '77. After all, I find that now I have a chance 
of teaching what I like, I settle down pretty much on the 
old lines. The staple of the instruction is Latin and Arith- 
metic. Latin somehow, wherever it is introduced, gets the 
lion's share of attention. Last week I took the lower divi- 
sion. What struck me was the extreme difficulty of the 
language and the terrible amount of time it takes to get 
anything done at all perfectly. The boys learn fast enough 
to run off sum es est, amo amas, &c, but when one asks the 
Latin for ' you have been,' ' they were loving,' ' he is loved,' 
answers come very slowly and a tremendous expenditure 
of time is needed to get these things producible with any 
fluency. Marcel, Hamilton and Co. would doubtless say 
that an impressional course should precede any attempt at 
expression in Latin, but it seems to me that if the boys are 
not capable of expression to the extent of ' we were ruling,' 
'he is loved,' they really don't feel the inflection at all, and 
impression alone cannot give this feeling. There must seem 
to them a purely arbitrary connection between each Latin 



232 R. H. Quick 

word and the English they are taught to give for it. In the 
upper division the brains do work rather faster, and I try 
to make the Latin (Woodford's Caesar) living to them by 
making them construe without book as I read, and also by 
giving the variations both for written and viva voce exercises. 
I also call attention to the clauses, &c, and hear the back 
vocabularies. My boys do learn some Latin, but slowly, 
slowly. They will have spent a year with me over Woodford, 
and will not know the book at all thoroughly then." 

"13 June '77. My boys don't get on so fast as I should 
expect with the Caesar (Woodford). Unless one keeps on 
asking the back vocabularies, they are forgotten. There is 
nothing like retranslation for impressing the words, idioms, &c. 
on the memory, but all this takes so long. The Latin lesson 
never flags, and the boys seem interested in it. If I could 
find time they should always read aloud some of the back 
chapters without construing. One could tell, partly by the 
reading, partly by a question or two, whether they under- 
stood. I sometimes read a back chapter to them. I want 
them to feel the Latin and find it a means of conveying 
thought, and not merely a collection of words for parsing or 
an equivalent for so many English words. Yesterday I tried 
all the boys together in a drill in verbs. When I asked such 
questions as ' they had loved,' Jackson asked piteously what 
tense it was, and they were much more ready with the present 
participle of rego than with the Latin for ' ruling.' 

" To give some notion of Latin as a means of communi- 
cating thought, I have made up sentences about the war in 
the East. Turci non habent -eundem imperatorem quem ha- 
bebant. Imperator quem habebant Mehemet Ali vocatus 
est. Novo imperatori Suleiman nomen est. The great danger 
is covering too much ground. I have also been driven to 
another experiment (the Neposes ordered were not sent in 
time), which seems to answer. I took Cornelius Nepos, 
chap. 1., clause by clause, and got the boys to construe as 



Wrinkles 233 

I read it out. What was too difficult for them I omitted or 
explained. When they had been through it a few times and 
knew all about it, I gave it out as dictation. This piece of 
dictation was very fairly done. I corrected it. On Monday 
the boys will have to construe it and also put sentences 
from it into Latin. This way of giving out the Latin seems 
to me better than giving the boys the text, at first at least. 
One great advantage is that one can cut out things beyond 
their comprehension and draw their attention to peculiarities. 
There is a good paper in this month's Journal of Education, 
by C. W. Bourne, falling foul of the Local Examinations for 
setting the book a year beforehand so that the translation is 
learnt off by heart. If the piece set in examinations were 
varied, this learning by heart plan would break down." 



Matches. Scratch pairs 

" 19. 11. 77. I have to-day hit on a plan which has ad- 
vantages over other matches. It was suggested, I think, by 
the ' scratch pairs ' at fives. The master makes a list of pairs, 
putting the best boy with the worst, the next best with the 
next worst, and so on. A number of questions, hard and easy 
alternately, are given, and everybody writes the answers. In 
this way, if the master has arranged the pairs well, it will be 
found that the number of marks gained by each pair are 
about the same, and there is great excitement to see who 
will win." 

Seria ludo 

" I found myself getting ill-tempered, though I don't know 
why, and it became necessary to make the lesson amusing if 
possible. I did this by letting the boys count simultaneously 
in different series, 2, 5, 8, 11, &c, and doing it as a kind of 
drill in time with the beatings of a stick. The thing was to 



234 R. H. Quick 

see who stopped when my stick stopped. Some boys were 
caught every time, and they all shouted with laughter when- 
ever I stopped and they did not. I afterwards had a short 
match between sides which I selected. As I managed to 
amuse the boys I recovered my own equanimity. After 
dinner I gave out a French song in the following way. I 
dictated first the English of a verse. I then asked the 
French for words where I thought they would know them ; 
in fact I made them (with help) find out the French. I 
then read the French to them and asked for infinitives of 
verbs, &c. Finally I wrote the French line by line on the 
board. No one was allowed to write till I had rubbed out 
the French. Thus they were driven to observe the whole 
line and remember the spelling, accents, &c. They were 
much interested by this mode of copying, and they did it 
very fairly. Of course the time spent in giving out a song 
in this way is considerable, but it pays." 

Bad Teaching 

" Ordinary teaching in the country is intensely bad. Of 
this there can be no doubt whatever. E.g. I went the other 
evening and found Bertie B. (eight years old) getting up his 
work for the following day (he is a day-boy at Miss W.'s 
school). I found he was being introduced to Latin by 
learning by heart the Public School Primer from the be- 
ginning, small print and all, and saying the gibberish — such 
it must be to him — at the rate of a third of a page a day. 
When one sees how idiotic much school teaching is, one 
thinks that much better results would be obtained by ra- 
tional teaching, but I suspect one exaggerates the possible 
improvements. The boy's mind pursues its own way, and is 
but slightly affected by his school work. Young people's 
minds gambol about like puppies. The old gentleman takes 
the puppy for a walk. He plods slowly along the path : the 



Accuracy for children 235 

puppy runs all over the adjacent fields. It's of no use trying 
to keep the puppy at his heels, so whether the path is good 
or not doesn't so much matter. Of course this figure, like 
most figures, must not be pushed far. The puppy's muscles 
gain as much by its scampering in all directions as by 
following a beaten track, but the boy's mind has to learn con- 
centration. It is an interesting question how long concen- 
trated attention would be kept up by boys. In almost all 
school work the boys only think of the work by snatches, so 
the school time may be long without over mental fatigue. 
But if the teaching were really effective, it could not go on for 
so many hours of the day." 

Is acctcrate knowledge possible or desirable for children? 

" At first go-off one thinks that, by sticking to a little, 
one can get that little perfect : but this is not so certain. 
Suppose we take, say, in Latin, the first declension and the 
present of sum. By working these in all sorts of ways a 
small boy does in time get to know them, but the teacher 
is appalled to find how much time and practice it takes to 
get even this small amount well known, and after all he 
comes to the conclusion that the child's knowledge is at best 
nothing like his own knowledge, so that he hardly seems to 
get a proper return for the time and trouble spent. And 
then again, the child has no love of accuracy and has a 
great love of getting on ; so this grinding away at a small 
quantity seems to him like marking time instead of marching. 
Bertie B. told me the other day he was awfully glad he had 
got into a new Latin book, the old one was ' so easy.' He 
admitted that he did not do the exercises in the old book 
quite right, but as the book was easy he was glad to get 
out of it. As children want to get on and have pleasure 
in putting out their strength, one sees that the plan which 
requires them to master the elements thoroughly must be 



236 R. H. Quick 

worked with the greatest caution. Competition is the best 
spur to getting up the pace combined with accuracy. As V. 
is alone, I manage to make him compete with himself. I time 
him and see how long he is in giving the Latin of a set of 
English sentences again and again, and keeping a record. He 
has a diary in which the times are entered and the marks he 
gets for each lesson." 

Why children are badly taught 

" It is strange how ill simple things like teaching arith- 
metic are done. My new pupils can't set down a simple 
addition sum even with a few digits. The form of all their 
written work is horrible, and they are terribly backward. 
The truth is, no one will take the pains to teach children 
properly. It is thought to be what anybody can do. But 
this is a mistake. It requires a good deal of intelligence and 
a vast amount of time and patience, and these three factors 
are rarely found together. There are in the world a host of 
things which can be done with great ease passably, but cannot 
without great effort be done well. Under this heading comes 
the teaching of young boys. It is easy enough to keep them 
quiet and employed, and more than this seems hardly ex- 
pected by anyone. That some small boys have Fdhigkeiten 
is proved by the men who run boys for entrance scholarships. 
It is, I believe, wonderful how good their Latin and Greek 
composition is at thirteen. But this is the only excellence 
hitherto cultivated. A boy's time is practically considered of 
no value before twelve, if he is not going in for an entrance 
scholarship. In six years, between six and twelve, he is taught 
to write, but not to express himself in writing. He is taught, 
or rather half taught, the multiplication table. He is taught 
to potter about with figures which he doesn't understand. 
He has a smattering of Latin given him, but does not know 
even the declensions perfectly. He has also learnt history 



Preparatory Schools 237 

and geography ; but, whatever that process may have been, it 
has left no trace behind. He reads with some effort and 
little understanding, unless he has taken to amusing books 
for himself. He spells badly and does not know a single 
piece of English poetry or a single hymn, though he has 
learnt several. Finally his understanding of English words 
extends only to the words he uses with his schoolfellows. 
He knows the sound of many more words, but they convey 
no notion to his mind. 

" It might seem at first sight as if it would be very easy to 
improve on this, but when things settle down pretty generally 
in a particular way, there must be some reason for it; the 
tendency must be strong in that direction. I own I attrib- 
ute a good deal (too much perhaps) to a thoroughly bad 
tradition. Could anything show more folly than the ordi- 
nary school-books for children? But in my disgust I am in 
danger of rushing into the opposite extreme and not making 
enough use of books." 

Shades of the prison-house 

"21. 1. 82. There was a time when I thought lads from 
fourteen to seventeen heavy, uninterested and uninteresting. 
When I went to Orme Square I found young boys, children 
in fact, far more delightful. Perhaps in school I find them 
so still, but as companions out of school — ! There is no 
disguising the fact that they talk an infinity of the silliest 
rubbish. Most of their talk to one another is a series of 
rudenesses which provoke in all but the person addressed a 
clatter of unmeaning laughter. Is it that I am growing old? 
Or why do I find, as I never found before, boys an intolerable 
bore ? 

" I hear Kynersley does what I always meant to do, refuses 
boys who have ever been at a boarding school. I have now 
been just on a year at this work and have not had a single 



238 R. H. Quick 

boy offered me straight from home, so my plan of an ideal 
school has entirely fallen through. I have even tried to 
persuade myself that, as I could not refuse boys from day 
schools, I could not keep out mischief and improper know- 
ledge. This may be so, but it is not so much the knowledge 
as the tone of boys from preparatory schools that does the 
harm. 

" What disgusting holes the ordinary preparatory schools 
must be. I have here now V. D., who in his talk with other 
boys reminds me of the lowest type of London ' cad ' when 
on the ' spree.' Instead of having their minds directed to 
whatever things are fair, they have had nothing to think of 
but the mean, squalid surroundings and the petty monotony 
of their dreary lives. How they can have been employed in 
school for so many hours without learning anything at all is 
to me a mystery." 

Repetition the mother of studies 

"25 Jan. '82. I ended the last book with a growl at pre- 
paratory schools and the boys who come from them. These 
schools do seem utterly bad, and I have said why I think 
them bad in their moral influence. That their intellectual 
influence is bad is no great wonder. The teachers, as a 
rule, have no clear ideas themselves. How then can they 
give clear ideas to others? Then one of the most valuable 
lessons that can be taught is how to take pains. But this 
lesson is seldom taught. The boys are allowed to scramble 
through their work, and much more is made of quantity than 
quality. I know how hard it is to get anything beyond a very 
low standard. When I first began teaching I once halved the 
lessons of the form and thought to double the accuracy of 
the learning. Lowe reproved me, and in part he was right. 
The boys' preparation of construing was not much better 
than before. Boys are accustomed to a low standard, and 



Science 239 

hardly understand the existence of a higher. Construing was 
an unfortunate subject for the experiment. There are things, 
however, in which youngsters can raise the standard. For 
instance, in written work, if you insist on neatness, a certain 
amount of painstaking becomes necessary at once. When a 
boy takes pains to form each letter properly, the habit of 
painstaking has already begun. Accuracy is generally ren- 
dered impossible by a stupid notion that, directly one thing 
is learnt, a boy should go on to the next. But when a 
thing is learnt, it should be impressed by constant repeti- 
tion. Learn something thoroughly and then compare with it 
what comes next. This should be the invarible rule ; as 
in Latin with the first and second declensions, the first and 
second conjugations. Another important point is to keep 
anomalies out of sight. I asked S. to give a beginner some 
second declension words to write, and he at once wrote down 
virus. This was a terrible blunder." 

Science not for children 

"I'm afraid I must be very bumptious, but though I know 
well enough what a slight and feeble insight I have into things, 
I am constantly astonished at the gross stupidity which people 
fall into in most matters of which I am competent to judge. 
Anybody who has a conception of what science is and of what 
a child is, must know that all the conceptions of science are 
quite out of the child's reach, and yet nowadays children 
have lessons in science. May told me that at his last school 
they had lessons twice a week in science — '■ centre of gravity 
and that sort of thing.' ' What is the centre of gravity ? ' I 
asked. ' The line that keeps you up, Sir, isn't it ? ' He 
had doubtless seen a picture of a man with a vertical line 
through the centre of gravity, and had been told something 
about falling. Hence this new definition of the centre of 
gravity." 



240 R. H. Quick 



Work ill done is worse than noiie 

"It is very important with all boys, young boys especially, 
that they should be sure of getting recognition, and prompt 
recognition, whenever they take particular pains. This is even 
more important than that occasional carelessness should not 
escape notice ; for if a boy takes great pains with a piece of 
work and expects this to be noticed, he is discouraged by 
finding it passed over. Of course it makes a great demand 
on the master if every piece of written work is to be esti- 
mated soon after it is done, and this may seem almost im- 
possible when numbers are large ; but careless work is worse 
than useless. ' Work ill done is worse than none ' might be 
a school proverb. So the quantity should be kept down and 
pains are easily discovered ; the mere handwriting is commonly 
an index." 

The mind of young boys 

" My notion is that very young boys lack not so much 
intellectual perception as intellectual retention. W. T. often 
shows remarkable intelligence in taking things in, and the 
ideas of powers and multiples had been in his mind, I am 
sure, over and over again. But the young mind, though it 
perceives, does not conceive knowledge like an older mind. 
Perhaps the words are retained, but the ideas slip from under 
them. The teacher has assured himself that the ideas were 
there ; by frequent repetition he ascertains that the words are 
there still, so he thinks he is building on a sure foundation 
when there is nothing in the mind of the pupil but empty 
husks of words." 

Emulation in small schools 

"22. 7. 82. One of the great advantages of a large school 
is supposed to be the greater force of emulation which can be 



Small Classes 241 

obtained where the numbers are large, but it is very easy to 
overestimate the peculiar advantages of a big school in this 
respect. In large classes only the boys near the top are 
much affected by rivalry. The boys who think they have 
no chance of their remove don't much care where they come 
out, so the spur only pricks the winning horses. And where 
the number is small the master can get emulation enough. 
When I had only one pupil I managed to make him com- 
pete with himself, and he was immensely delighted to find 
how his pace improved. When the number of boys is small, 
some may be discouraged by finding they cannot keep up 
with their companions ; but one can generally find some sub- 
ject in which the order is inverted. Certainly in the * trials ' 
now going on I find the competition keen enough, though only 
six boys are being examined." 

Adva?itages of few pupils 

"21. 6. 82. It always is, and I suppose must be, the 
case that we are most conscious of the advantages of what 
we have decided to part with. I have always found pleasure 
in teaching small boys, whether many or few, but I am only 
just learning what a magnificent field of observation is open 
to the teacher of a few. Herbart said that a teacher, in 
learning his calling, ought for a time to teach one or two. 
I don't know whether a young teacher would make the most 
of such an opportunity, but a grand opportunity it certainly 
is, especially if the number be five or six instead of one or 
two. 

" Then again, masters generally trouble themselves very 
little about the preparation of the boys. Yet I agree with 
Breal that the master may learn more by being with the 
boys and observing them when they are preparing their work 
than by spending any amount of time examining the results 
afterwards. 



242 R. H. Quick 

" C. M. is a regular specimen of a boy with English school 
training. If you give him an hour's work to do he has always 
' done it,' at the end of twenty minutes, and he will sit doing 
nothing or fidgeting and distracting the other boys for the 
remaining forty minutes. Yet he is not exactly idle, and will 
do a vast amount of work, if it is mere mechanical work, and 
he may do it at his own pace ; but he can't or won't think, 
so that I can get no good work out of him. Whether boys 
of this stamp are the outcome or the efficient cause of 
our ordinary school system I am not prepared to say, but 
they tend to make a quantity of mechanical work seem a 
necessity." 

Evil is wrought by want of thought 

"27. 7. 82. Those who have charge of the young should 
take care to give them three things — something to eat, some- 
thing to do, something to think and talk about. Unfortu- 
nately this third requisite is almost always neglected. School- 
work, when it is good, does a great deal for training the 
thinking powers, but it does not furnish anything to think 
about when lessons are over. Grown people sometimes 
grumble at the amount of interest given to the games. At 
Harrow it sounds almost ludicrous to hear the boys talk of 
a cricket-match as if the welfare of the school, not to say of 
Europe, depended on it. But boys must think about some- 
thing. To some extent, no doubt, their homes supply them 
with matter for thought but not for talk. The most natural 
common subject is the games, and there might be a much 
worse one. Much of the filthy talk among boys comes from 
an absence of subjects of interest. A big boy at a public 
school told C. A. that home was a delight to him because 
he got a change of conversation there. At school he heard 
hardly anything but foulness. This he did not object to on 
moral grounds, but it bored him by its monotony. The 



Boys Conversation 243 

amount of such talk the masters cannot of course ascertain, 
but when I hear boys talking among themselves I am sur- 
prised how vapid their talk is. It is made up almost en- 
tirely of ' what we did at the last school ' ; and, though I 
don't wonder at each boy's taking an interest in his own 
past, I don't understand their listening so patiently to the 
dull stuff they tell one another." 

Latin into English 

" It is wonderful how boys break down over the very 
simplest Latin Unseen, and yet this is a power which should 
be especially cultivated. The exercise books mostly give 
sentences to be put into English, but they are of the same 
difficulty as the sentences to be put into Latin. This is an 
obvious mistake. Learners should have far harder sentences 
than they could put into Latin." 

Arithmetic 

"5. 9. 87. Yesterday I had a talk with Hawes Turner, 
who thinks that, as intuition can go only a very little way, 
arithmetic should be considered a science of abstraction and 
symbols like algebra. ' To work with abstractions,' says 
Turner, ' is a great step in intellectual progress, and this 
the child should make very early in arithmetic. When you 
say there are 5 men on 5 horses and that the number of 
men and of horses is the same, you abstract the number 
and think of it as you think of an algebraic symbol. There 
is no advantage in taking the number 5. It would make 
little difference in difficulty if you said, if every horse had a 
rider, the number of horses and riders would both be ///.' 
Turner is essentially a theoretical man, a man with a restless 
intellect, who is always dancing round everything to get a 
complete notion of it, and who does not care a button for 



244 R. H. Quick 

anything but the complete view. The intellect of most of 
us, of myself certainly, is by no means restless, and it works, 
not in quest of complete views, but simply to see how things 
may best be done. Not the complete view, but the practical 
advantages we derive from it are what we value. So we 
seldom penetrate further than we expect to find some prac- 
tical results. In this particular case the result which the 
ordinary teacher cares about is, how can a child be easiest 
taught to do sums. Of course this is not the result I think 
of as most important. I want to know how the child can 
best have its intellectual power developed. In this subject 
of arithmetic the Germans all say, Keep to intuition as long 
as possible. For a year or two never give any number that 
the child can have no conception of. This of course ex- 
cludes the multiplication table. 9X9 = 81, though it may be 
verified, never can be perceived even by the adult. Turner 
thinks the dwelling on intuition by the Germans is a mis- 
take. He finds arithmetic is a science of abstractions ; he 
knows that the intellect makes a stride when it throws over 
the particular and grasps the general, so he says it is a mis- 
take to keep children as far as possible to intuitions. My 
notion is that neither arithmetic nor algebra as usually taught 
does much for the intellect. It doesn't follow that when you 
cease to have intuition you get abstraction." 

The key to Discipline, Patience 

" One of the great secrets of managing young people, children 
especially, is to give them time for reflection. Children are 
constantly being ruffled by this or that, and immediately turn 
' naughty.' They will, if addressed, then answer rudely. Of 
course it is in the power of the grown person to punish them 
so severely that they dare not be rude another time. But a 
little forbearance will often do better. In point of fact, the dis- 
play of 'temper ' on the part of the young commonly produces 



Do not force the pace 245 

a corresponding feeling of temper in the grown-up, and 
a conflict ensues in which the grown-up has all the credit 
and the young one all the punishment. Little as we allow 
it, even to ourselves, we do mostly feel irritated when the 
young resist us, and we are apt to punish, as we think for 
their sakes, when in truth it is more for our own. But can 
we allow the young to set our authority at defiance? This is 
a very nice point. The truth I take to be this : the strong 
can allow their authority to be disregarded ; the weak cannot. 
This is the reason why nursemaids, pupil-teachers and such 
punish much more readily than a man would punish. The 
late Lord Derby once quoted against the Duke of Argyll the 
story of the navvy who let his wife beat him because it pleased 
her and did not hurt him. Where possible, it is better to give 
the child time to recover, and to treat its naughtiness as some- 
thing absurd. In any case we must beware of giving way to 
our own temper." 

Unreaso?2able demands of Teachers on Children 

" 24. 10. 87. There is (or should be) the same differ- 
ence between the powers of thought of a man intellectually 
educated and a man intellectually uneducated as there is 
between the power of muscle in the trained athlete and the 
ordinary person. Now the child is ex hypothesi uneducated, 
and the teacher is (or should be) an intellectual athlete. 
Now suppose an athlete were to perform some feat before 
a child and then require the child to imitate it. It might 
happen that the feat was the very simplest and easiest that 
the athlete could think of, and yet the child might be totally 
unable to ' follow my leader.' If the athlete got impatient 
and tried to expedite matters by harsh language or blows, we 
should think him an ass or a brute. But in teaching we find 
this sort of thing only too common. The teacher performs 
some very small effort of thought and requires the learner to 



246 R. H. Qttick 

follow, but the learner can't ; or perhaps the learner manages 
it once, and then the teacher assumes that the child can do 
it again with as little exertion as the teacher ; but in point of 
fact the effort tired the weak intellectual muscles, and cannot 
for a time be repeated. The teacher forgets this and calls the 
child's refusal gross stupidity or even contumacy. The reflec- 
tions are borne in on me by my difficulty in getting Dora to 
see that if an becomes an when written ane, In must be pro- 
nounced in when written ine." 



What to teach 247 



WHAT TO TEACH 

Latin in Middle-class Schools 

"On the opening day at Cranleigh Lord Carnarvon praised 
the school plan for including Latin. Charles Buxton, on the 
other hand, praised it for placing Latin last in the list of sub- 
jects taught. Boys, he argued, should be made happy. Latin 
grammar makes them miserable. It is necessary drudgery when 
the study of great classical authors is to follow, but if boys are 
never to go beyond the rudiments, the rudiments had much 
better be given up altogether. 

"This sounds plausible, but I for one do not agree to 
it. I deny in limine that Latin grammar is drudgery. There 
is a compactness about it which makes it pleasant to teach 
and to learn. Then it is a great advantage to teach a boy a 
foreign language without the great crux of pronunciation. I 
doubt if an intelligent boy could in any other way, in the 
same time, get his notions of language so extended, get to 
distinguish so clearly between what is conventional and what 
belongs to the first principles as by a course of Latin grammar. 
Then, by constantly connecting Latin words with the English 
derivatives, we shall greatly improve our boys' knowledge of 
their own tongue and guard against a very common weakness 
of their class, the habit of using words without understanding 
them. Again, there is no doubt that Latin can be properly 
learnt at school, and it is not so certain that we could make 
anything of the 'ologies. 

"In this matter, no doubt, I am prejudiced. When I 
was at Zermatt I went to consult the village doctor for 
a fit of toothache. He had nothing specially suitable for 
that disorder, but offered to treat me for fits, as he had 
some medicine which he had found efficacious in such cases. 
Doubtless University men who engage in education are likely 



248 R. H. Quick 

to be guided, as the Zermatt doctor was, rather by what 
they can give than by what is required. On the other hand, 
the educational theorists consider merely whether it would be 
advantageous for a boy to have learnt such and such subjects, 
and forget that some things boys can and will learn, and some 
things they can't and won't." 

Forms of sound words 

" Forms of words which give expression to one's feelings 
and thoughts often have great influence over them. This is, 
of course, specially true of words of the Bible. I have 
often wondered at the small effect the clearest words seem 
to have — how Bible readers quite unconsciously read and 
re-read passages without attaching any meaning, or attaching 
quite a false meaning, to them. I have been so much struck 
by this that at times I have wished that we were less fa- 
miliar with Scripture, and have thought it would be better if 
all freshness were not destroyed as it is by our present edu- 
cation. But on the other hand, though words seem often as 
incapable of stirring thought as fire is of kindling stone, there 
are times when thought and feeling seek expression, and then 
we take to familiar words to express them. In doing this we 
are much influenced by the words, so it is of great importance 
that we should have true and noble forms of expression in our 

minds A good deal of Tennyson, especially In Memoriam, 

has so got intertwined with my feelings and experiences that 
I can hardly think of some of the greatest problems of life 
without some of his verses ringing in my ears, and doubtless 
affecting my attitude towards them. For these reasons I 
think that noble expressions of thought and feeling, espe- 
cially rhythmical expressions, should be given boys as a pos- 
session for life, not learnt to-day and forgotten tomorrow. 
' Never learn by heart what you don't understand ' has some- 
thing to say for itself; but, though I would give as much as 



The power of words 249 

possible what would interest boys, I feel that we cannot stop 
here. We want to give them some things which can only be 
understood properly with wider experience than theirs." 

Culture v. Science. I. C. S. Examinations 

" 23 Dec. '76. In to-day's Times there is a letter from 
Sir Richard Strachey about the Headmasters' Conference. 
It seems that the Headmasters want to have the examina- 
tions for the I. C. S. assimilated to that for Entrance Scholar- 
ships at the University. Of course, if the examinations differ 
in subjects, the masters cannot prepare their boys to go in for 
either one or the other, and the ' Indians ' must go to crammers. 
But Sir Richard points out that science is more needed in 
India than culture. The classical course was formed by those 
who wanted to give knowledge — all the knowledge then at- 
tainable. We now defend the course on different grounds. 
Perhaps so, but our arguments against utility are not new 
arguments. We find them stated strongly enough by Plato 
and Aristotle." 

Grant Duff on a Rational Education 

" 20. 8. 77. In the Fortnightly Review this month (August) 
there is an article by Grant Duff on a Rational Education. It 
is far from a wise paper. His notion of the educated man is 
the man who has been taught certain things. There is, I 
believe, a fundamental error here. I believe the educated 
man {i.e. the intellectually educated — physical and moral 
education are not in question), the intellectually educated 
man, is he who has intellectual interests aroused in him, 
who has a desire of knowledge and also the art of gaining, 
retaining and using it. G. D. places the centre of his system 
in the things to be learnt, and makes it the test of the edu- 
cated — does he know Geography, English Literature, Italian, 
&c. &c. / would put the centre of the education in the 



250 R. H. Quick 

man and ask, Does he care for these and other knowledges? 
Is he acquiring them? Can he acquire them ? Can he 
turn what knowledge he has to account? But someone 
may say the difference between the two notions is more ap- 
parent than real. G. D.'s educated man must have had his 
interests aroused and his powers developed in the course of 
his learning, and your educated man must have acquired a 
good deal of knowledge in the course of his development. 
I admit G. D. supposes intellectual interests to have been 
aroused as well as knowledge gained, for he would have no 
study taken up that will not be carried on in after life. But 
there will be found a great practical difference between the 
two systems. G. D. measures everything by the knowledge 
acquired, I would measure everything by the activity and 
strength of intellect produced. The difference between man 
and man is after all a difference in power of vision, much 
more than a difference in the things subjected to inspection. 
The educated man, says G. D., has studied the masterpieces of 
literature, in other words, the teacher has made him read them, 
given explanations, and asked questions. When this process 
has been gone through, the pupil has been to that extent 
educated. But you can't put the mind through a course 
of literature as you can put the body through a course of 
marching. Suppose Samson Agonistes has been set for an 
Army Examination. Some six or seven hundred young men 
study it in consequence, and are all of them to that extent 
' educated ' in G. D.'s sense of the word. But in my sense 
of the word many at least of these young men are perfectly 
incompetent to get any education whatever out of Samson 
Agonistes. The eye sees only what it brings with it, and 
some of these young men can see in Samson Agonistes 
only some deuced hard stuff that they have great difficulty 
in getting up. It is then absurd to speak of education as 
if it were teaching or even learning this or that. Edu- 
cation is training the mental vision, and the means of doing 



Knowledge no measure of Education 251 

this may be infinitely varied. Again, G. D. talks about 
learning Geography, History, &c. &c. This sort of talk 
always seems to me to show the profoundest ignorance of 
our real position. 

" When omne scibile was supposed to be contained in the 
writings of Aristotle and of Thomas Aquinas, there seemed 
some sense in speaking of learning as a finite act. But now 
the scibile stretches in all directions to infinity. G. D. wishes 
everybody to learn earth-knowledge. Why, a man might de- 
vote his whole life to the study of the paddock behind his 
house and not exhaust the study even of this little cant of 
earth in his threescore years and ten. And as with earth- 
knowledge, so with other knowledges. It is not more absurd 
to call the knowledge of the names of a few excrescences 
and the course of a few streams on the surface of the earth 
earth-knowledge than to call history the knowledge of a few 
facts about a few people of the millions who have gone before 
us. We may learn Assyrian history and even Greek and 
Roman history, thanks to the greater portion of those his- 
torians having passed away for ever. But who could find 
time to learn the history of Europe even during the last 
month? All we can do is just to get hold of a few facts, 
just as we measure the big mountains and draw the courses 
of the big streams, and then call this earth-knowledge. Just 
the same with the other knowledges, so that when we com- 
pare what the 'best educated' man knows with what might 
be known, the amount dwindles to insignificance. G. D. 
defines the object of all general education to be ' to enable 
people to make the most of their lives, or in other words : 
(1) To improve their own faculties to the uttermost. (2) To 
do as much good as possible to other people. (3) To enjoy 
as much as they can, due regard being had to the first two 
objects.' Now I don't quarrel with this definition, but I 
don't think that the course he prescribes is the one which 
would naturally follow from his premises. 'The leading 



252 R. H. Quick 

study should be the knowledge of the ball on which we live, 
alike in its physical and political aspects.' ' By getting up 
Mrs Somerville's Physical Geography and Reclus's La terre 
a vol d'oiseau, the pupil would by one or two-and-twenty 
have the kind of knowledge of geography in its highest sense 
which should form the most important part of every English 
gentleman's education.' A writer who says that a knowledge 
of geography should form the most important part of educa- 
tion must be either a very inaccurate writer or a very erroneous 
thinker. I quite agree with him that the study he recommends 
is an important one, and I like sticking to a good book, but it 
is not the whole duty of man." 



Shorthand 

"4. 1. 80. The other day at Cranleigh Dr Wormell said 
that they had been driven into Pitman's Shorthand because 
employers wanted boys who knew it, and so great has been 
the success in sharpening boys' brains and teaching them to 
analyse sounds that he would keep to it even if it were not 
used out of school." 



Mark Pattison on Middle Class Education, in New 
Quarterly Magazine, Jan. 1880 

" As usual, M. P. says some true things in excellent form : 
1 There is a religion of the school, a religion which does not 
consist in catechism, but in inspiring noble aims and that 
human consciousness which is the only root on which man- 
ners and civility can be grown. . . . The only principle on 
which a great people constituted for permanence can estab- 
lish its schools is on the recognition of the worth of men 
as men.' 



A critique of Mark Pattison 253 

" But what people ever did establish schools on this prin- 
ciple? The English were, perhaps are, a great people, but 
our schools were never established on this principle. The 
France of '89, or rather of '92, had such an idea, but there 
was no element of permanence in what was then established. 
' There is much dispute as to what should be taught in middle 
schools. Let the answer be, That which humanises. The 
aim of the school is not the storing of the memory with 
knowledge. That and that only is education which moulds, 
forms, modifies the soul or mind. Out of a piece of cold 
metal you can fashion nothing. Iron must be heated before 
it can be bent and shaped to any purpose. Nothing educates 
which does not raise the mental powers at least to red heat ; 
it is more efficacious still if it can raise them to a white heat, 
and still more, if it can fuse them.' 

"Doth he not speak in parables? I wish he would give 
us a key, i.e. use simile instead of metaphor. 

" ' Putting aside the elementary school, which is a prepara- 
tory stage only, we shall not be wrong if we say that the aim 
of school after fourteen, be it middle or grammar school, is to 
form a perfect mind and body, senses and understanding, all 
performing their functions in combined healthy and harmonious 
action.' 

"While agreeing heartily that the school should aim at 
development, I doubt whether, even in its ideal, it must not 
accept of many limitations. E.g. the school should endea- 
vour to cultivate the senses. Should it attempt to train the 
smell? or the taste? There are immense possibilities which 
must be neglected. Our toes may acquire almost as much 
skill as our fingers, but I suppose no one would recommend 
toe exercise. I expect the development of the mind must be 
similarly limited, even in aim. 

" ' We aim not at teaching this" or that, but at raising all 
the powers bodily and mental to their full state of health 
and vigour, and directing them towards worthy objects. The 



254 R. H. Quick 

teacher, says Jean Paul, endeavours to liberate the ideal hu- 
man being which is concealed in every child. . . . This is why 
this education is called liberal, because it liberates the true 
man in us from those shackles of human prejudice in which 
untrained minds are hide-bound all their lives.' 

" Mark Pattison makes a point by using ' liberal ' in this 
sense, but surely this is not a correct account of the word 
considered historically." 

Compulsory Greek at Cambridge 

" 23. 10. 80. This question is to be discussed again on 
the 26th instant. I have lazily kept out of the discussion 
hitherto, and yet it is one of the few points on which I have 
a very decided opinion. There are some subjects of study 
in which the whole course is, so to speak, homogeneous. A 
man who masters me first book of Euclid and stops there 
has exercised his mind in the same way (however different 
the degree) as the wrangler who is good in geometry of three 
dimensions. But in some the different stages have no more 
in common than ploughing a field and eating bread. The 
study of Greek is of the latter kind. The Greek scholar is 
immensely benefited in two ways. He understands, and can 
to some extent manipulate for himself, the most perfect instru- 
ment for expressing thought ever known to men. Next, he 
is enabled to understand magnificent conceptions conveyed 
to him by means of this perfect instrument. He profits then 
by his knowledge of the language and by his study of the 
literature. But the early stages of the study convey neither 
of these benefits. There is no magic in 6 rj to more than 
in fee-fi-fo-fum. Some schoolmasters, indeed, maintain that 
drudgery is good for boys, and therefore the complicated 
Greek accidence is specially good. They commend it to 
their pupils as Fluellen commended the leak to Pistol. But 
this kind of pedagogy is rather old-fashioned and discredited. 



Compulsory Greek 255 

It is now pretty well agreed that the learning of grammatical 
forms is not a good thing in itself. Unfortunately the Greek 
forms are peculiarly difficult and cannot be learnt without a 
great expenditure of time. This time is well spent when it 
bears fruit in the intelligent study of Greek authors, but it is 
thrown away when the pupil never gets beyond the stage of 
stumbling through a few pages of Greek by aid of a crib. 

" Now the University, in fixing the minimum required, fixes 
the maximum that will be aimed at by a vast number of stu- 
dents who either seek to get a degree on the lowest possible 
terms, or who grudge every hour they are compelled to take 
from other subjects. At present the University requires just 
that amount of Greek which involves the getting up of difficult 
grammatical forms but does not involve the employment 
of this knowledge to any good purpose. There is a notion 
in some people's minds that a University degree is a proof 
that the graduate has received a liberal education, and a 
liberal education, they say, must include Greek. But Greek 
is not exactly a fixed quantity. How much Greek? The 
power to translate easy Greek at sight? No, not so much as 
that. The power to translate the best-known Greek classics? 
No, not so much as that. The power to translate one of 
them? No, not so much as that. But a man cannot be 
pronounced to have received a liberal' education until, with 
the assistance of Mr Bohn and a Little-go coach, he has got 
by heart a translation of a fraction of some Greek author in 
verse and of another in prose, and until he knows enough 
of the grammatical forms to connect the English with the 
Greek, and very seldom to take the verb for the substantive 
or vice versa. These conditions satisfied, the liberal educa- 
tion in my day was complete as far as Greek was concerned. 
Many of us never looked at a Greek character again. They 
acquired enough mathematics for a Junior Optime, and the 
University, quite satisfied with such attainments, admitted them 
in due course to any degree they cared to pay for." 



256 R. H. Qtiick 



Multiplicity of Studies 

" In the Journal of Education for August, '81, is a paper 
by C. Colbeck on this subject. 

" What would have been said of such a paper when I 
went up to Cambridge? But nobody could possibly have 
written it then. Colbeck considers the dethronement of the 
Classics a fait ace o?npli, and he wants all studies to be allowed 
and none specially honoured. When I went to Cambridge 
Classics and Mathematics were established in the Senate- 
House, just as port and sherry ('red' and 'white') in the 
Common Rooms. The Moral and Natural Sciences Triposes 
were attempted for the first time the year I went up, i.e. in 
1850, but they were thought little of, and St John's was 
considered bold in recognizing that Liveing's place in the 
Natural Science Tripos should be considered in his claim 
for a fellowship. Of course he would not have been elected 
unless he had been a high wrangler and fair classic as well." 



Public opinion a hindrance to education 

"15. 8. 81. Education, in this country at least, depends 
on public opinion, and I don't see how progress is possible ; 
for if anything is to be learnt about education, it must be 
learnt by special study, and the mass of people whose opinion 
is public opinion cannot perhaps, will not certainly, give the 
subject any study. The consequence is that we can never 
get beyond prima facie views. ' ft is useful to be able to 
read and write, therefore the sooner a child can read and 
write the better.' This is the prima facie view. Study of 
the subject leads one to a different conception of 'useful,' 
but public opinion can never have any but the prima facie 
notion. A. H., a person of ordinary education and ordinary 



General ignorance of Pedagogics 257 

intelligence, informed his boy, who was attending a Kinder- 
garten, that he learnt nothing but rubbish there. This of 
course the child went and communicated to the Kinder- 
gartnerin, and the thing was considered a splendid joke, 
though not, I fear, by the poor Kindergartnerin. A. H. 
does not seem to have thought for an instant that his first 
crude notion might possibly be less near the truth than that 
of Froebel, which is affecting the training of young children 
over a good part of the civilized world. That A. H., without 
any conviction on the subject, should look up to Froebel as an 
apostle could not be expected, but he surely might treat the 
conclusions of an expert with some respect. While the public 
supposes that it can get at the whole truth on educational 
matters prima facie (and that is, and is likely to be, its 
conviction). I don't see how progress is possible. The prima 
facie view must always be the same." 

Information 

"25. 8. 82. We are haunted by an incessant clamour for 
positive knowledge. The parents, when they suddenly wake 
up to an interest in their children's progress at school, try to 
test it by such questions as 'What is the capital of Brazil?' 
or 'What was the name of Henry VIII. 's last wife?' Then 
the headmaster allots a defined body of knowledge which boys 
shall store away in such a shape that they may be able to 
produce it when the examiner comes to inspect it. A full 
portmanteau on the inspection day, that's the only thing 
thought of. What is to become of the contents or of the 
portmanteau itself afterwards nobody ever troubles himself to 
think." 

Early intellectual impressions 

" One ought to magnify one's office more than one is wont 
to. The humdrum of exercise correction, testing of prepara- 
tion of work, &c, often conceals from one the real impression 



258 R. H. Quick 

of one's calling. Perhaps we have not much influence with 
boys, but we must have some, and how tremendously im- 
portant all influences are which act on the boy or young 
man. Before twenty-five we furnish our minds or, to change 
the metaphor, we take in the stoff which we afterwards work 
up. I am reminded of this by reading of Kleber's 'Vous 
vous ferez tuer la ! ' In the winter of '46 (more than twenty 
years ago !) I read up some of the Napoleon Buonaparte as 
a holiday task, and Napoleon's marshals have been acquaint- 
ances of mine ever since. How many books have I read as 
a man of which I retain no impression whatever ! It may be 
everything leaves some impression, but the early impressions 
are the important ones." 



Words and books have different meanings at different 
times of life 

" Nothing is more wonderful than the different effects of 
the same words on different people, nay, on the same people 
at different times. It has happened to me to read a book 
on education of which I might have been supposed a fair 
critic. I decided that the book was worthless. Some two 
or three years later I took it up by chance and thought it 
most valuable. So, too, particular parts of the Bible have at 
times a wonderful power over us, and then we lose it again. 
Before I went to Cambridge — when I was eighteen or nine- 
teen — I could hardly get out of my head the words ' No man 
that warreth entangleth himself with the affairs of this life/ 
and if I had been a Roman Catholic I should probably have 
taken monastic vows under their influence. The really great 
and the really good get, not a temporary, but permanent vision 
of some great truths, and their office is to animate these truths 
for others. 

" As, then, we find that our own minds are susceptible 
to different truths at different times, we need not be much 



Teachers should be opportune 259 

surprised that boys' minds are not as a rule susceptible to the 
truths which interest us. All educators seem to find that this 
is so. Teachers in general have been led to making pupils 
learn by heart what they may feel interested in some day or 
other. This is easy ; but it would clearly be better if we could 
find or render some truth interesting to boys." 



Teaching of English 

" I do not yet despair of finding in this subject the means 
of exercising boys' intelligence. But if one would do so, one 
must utterly abstain from notes and explanations. I have 
just looked over some answers to questions on Richard II. 
Wherever the boys could do so, they vomited the note just 
as they had swallowed it. When there was no note, they 
showed they had not understood the passage." 

Learning English through the Classics 

" We hear a great deal about our own language being best 
learnt through the study of the classics. I don't know how 
far this may be true of a few exceptional boys, but the average 
boy translates in this way. [Here follows a specimen school- 
boy rendering of Caesar.] Whether linguistic practice of this 
kind be after all of such great value is a question which must 
sometimes suggest itself to the strongest adherent of classical 
training." 

Ohne Liebe kein Lehren 

"24. 3. 83. 'Stray Papers on Education by B. H.' has 
been sent me from the Academy to review. In reading the 
papers one sees what a splendid work school keeping is for a 
loving and wise spirit. This lady has grasped a truth than 
which none can be more important or more commonly 



260 R. H. Quick 

neglected — that moral training is prior to intellectual. 'With- 
out love we can never be a warm, winning, loving influence to 
which a child clings with all the tender strength of child 
nature' (p. 5). The expression here might be better: we 
cannot cling to an influence : but the thought could not be 
juster. 

" At Guildford I used to feel that I did not care enough 
for my boys to influence them properly. Various causes com- 
bined to put me out of sympathy with them, but I felt that 
I had lost touch of my school and did not influence my boys 
as I should have done. 

" But it might be said it is quite impossible for a master in 
a large school to love his pupils ; he can never know them well 
enough. You might as well say a drill-sergeant couldn't teach 
drill without loving his recruits. No doubt masters in large 
schools do become too much masters of intellectual drill, or 
even of memory drill, the necessities of the case making 
drilling their function. But the higher influences can be 
exercised only through sympathy and a feeling related to love. 
It may be love of a class rather than of an individual, but if a 
man didn't ' like boys ' he would be powerless except for 
routine work. Of course when a man does ' like boys ' he will 
sometimes have to do with individuals whom he dislikes, and 
he has perhaps great difficulty in keeping this dislike from 
showing itself. But if he sympathises with boys as a class he 
will have formed some notion of how to treat them, and this 
notion will guide him even in the unfortunate exceptions." 

1 Skewing Boys ' 

" One of my most vivid school memories is of a new master 
at Scofield's when I was about ten years old. We were to 
begin Propria quae maribus with him, and to our horror he 
never prompted us with a word, but ' skewed ' us as soon as 
we stumbled. The consequence was that we went to work in 



Thoroughness 261 

a very different way from what we had been accustomed to. I 
ground most tremendously at the Propria, and the first lessons 
I learnt in it I could have said 20 years afterwards, though 30 
have been too many for it. As a boy I resolved that this was 
the way to hear lessons, but the passive resistance of one's 
boys seems to make this impossible. With Reps of course one 
might adopt this plan, but then there are some boys who have 
a real difficulty in learning by heart, and one gets into the 
habit of relaxing. In the matter of Reps the best plan seems 
to be to have things said again and again. But with con- 
struing — here one knows that one's boys ought to have the 
piece thoroughly well prepared, and, if a fellow hesitates, take 
it as a proof that he does not know his work properly. And 
yet one shrinks from turning boys as one should. Partly this 
comes from consideration (false consideration, I think) for the 
boys, and partly from consideration for oneself. It is such a 
fearful nuisance to have one's scanty leisure eaten up with 
turned boys. A boy or two is sure not to come, and then 
there is a terrible amount of thought and trouble necessary or 
things get slack." 

Understanding boys 

Beatus qui intettigit, Ps. xli. i 

"The understanding of mankind is not so easy as we 
sometimes imagine ; for it involves self-knowledge which is 
hard to get, and self-discipline which is hard to maintain. It 
is in this understanding of boys that we teachers mostly fail. 
The truth is we want something more than self-knowledge and 
self-discipline even. We want love. Kindliness we have, and 
we gladly do anything for our boys which obviously needs 
doing. We have, too, enough conscientiousness about our 
work to spend a great deal of time and care on it, though 
perhaps we are so accustomed to failure that we accept it too 
contentedly. But our great defect is that boys to us are too 



262 R. H. Quick 

much pupils to be taught languages and such like, and not 
human beings whose character and affections will be influenced 
by intercourse with us. As a rule, we do not understand boys, 
and we do not care enough about them to try to." 

Self- impro vement 

" The title of Watts's ' On the Improvement of the Mind ' 
called up early reminiscences of times when one was keen on 
self-improvement. The Saturday Review said the other day 
that nobody over thirty thought of self-improvement. Without 
entirely agreeing to this, I feel the truth and importance of the 
converse statement that people under thirty think a great deal 
of self-improvement. This might give us a considerable power 
if we could only get to know what sort of self-improvement 
each boy wishes. But here, as in so many things, one is pain- 
fully conscious how little one understands boys. Each boy has 
a range of hopes and fears, likes and dislikes, yearnings after 
some kind of good, and efforts both successful and unsuccess- 
ful towards it, which all make up a terra incognita to us. Just 
as a drill-sergeant gets to look on recruits as automata 
capable of being more or less successfully put through certain 
motions, so we masters get to regard boys almost exclu- 
sively with reference to their capacity (a very limited one, 
alas !) of doing certain lessons. One of the remarkable 
changes that come over us as we leave boyhood is that we 
lose our tendency to build castles in the air. I could not 
now amuse myself, I have long been unable to amuse my- 
self, in any hypothetical circumstances by thinking what I 
should do. Yet from very early childhood up to manhood this 
was my case and I suppose it is generally a favourite occupa- 
tion." 

Study of Educational Writers 

" One of the main things one gets from such study is a 
knowledge of the problems of one's occupation — e.g. should 



Study of Educational Writers 263 

grammar be explanatory or not ? Scholars find explanation of 
phenomena either in the history of the language or the 
working of the mind, and these explanations are a great help 
to their memory. They therefore give such explanations in 
their grammars. Then we are told that such explanations are 
useless when the phenomena themselves are not familiar. All 
you want at first is an explanation of facts. So Dupanloup 
and Matthew Arnold even praise Lhomond. Then comes 
Breal and says you are damaging boys' intelligence and giving 
simply phenomena and ignoring explanations. Breal says the 
professeur has not as good a chance as the maitre d' etudes, for 
the time to be with boys is at preparation. Whatever the pro- 
fesseur may do ' la force motrice est hors de la classe, laquelle 
marche a la remorque de l'etude ' (in tow of the preparation). 
Another great advantage one gets by reading educational 
literature is that one gets to look at things with a freshness 
which is impossible if one knows of no theory or practice 
but one's own. We have the stereotyped way of going on 
in school. Such and such lessons have to be set so and so, 
and. brought up prepared so and so. This seems to us the 
course of nature. But then comes a man like Breal and says, 
1 The instructor is he who sets the boys' minds to work.' This 
will not be done by the mere saying of prepared lessons. Put 
something before the boys and get their minds to work upon 
it then and there. This will be much better for them than 
their carrying a lot of stuff in their memories as in a wheel- 
barrow and shooting it down before you in school, then 
going away with light heart and lightened mind." 

11 Feb. 1879. Experience untrustworthy without scientific 

record 

"Talking with Dr F. Payne just now I was struck with 
what he said about the pre-scientific stage of schoolmasters' 
experience. Experience not brought to book, but merely 



264 R. H. Quick 

giving an impression, is next to worthless. One man says it 
is his experience that it always comes on to rain if he doesn't 
take out an umbrella ; another that his experience tells him to 
expect a hard winter when he sees plenty of berries. Such 
experiences may be given bona fide, but they are worthless. A 
doctor says that he has always found lemon juice good for 
rheumatism. This is valueless ; but if he takes notes and says, 
' I have given lemon juice to 100 cases and in 80 it has seemed 
to do good,' his evidence is of some value. The schoolmaster 
says perhaps, ' I have always found boys who began Greek late 
succeed in the study of Greek.' This is valueless. He should 
take notes of his cases. Another thing that doctors have 
learnt is to observe and note collateral circumstances. At one 
time in making a post mortem they simply noted the 
immediate cause of death ; now they note the condition of 
all the parts. In registering progress of boys the school- 
master should not omit, e.g., to mention any illness, though 
it occurred in the holidays. It may have made a great 
difference in the child's rate of development." 

Different types of Masters 

" A great many things go to the making of a good master, 
but failing the absolutely good, one may get good men of their 
kind and the kind may differ very widely. 

" One type is the good driver. He gets a good bit of work 
out of his boys and is respected by them. He must too be 
feared by them, or he will not drive properly. Of course it is 
easy to point out that the highest kind of work cannot thus be 
forced. It is so no doubt, but a great deal of work can be 
forced, and the boys will be the better for it. A boy would 
naturally rather be reading novels or ' bally- ragging ' than learn- 
ing repetition, though he may have no repugnance to the 
repetition. Then the consciousness that he will catch it if he 
' skews ' directs his energies into the right direction. I wish I 



Types of Masters 265 

were a better driver, but I am very weak in this line, and really 
can't get work done in this way. 

" Another type is the cramming master who asks boys the 
right things so often that they get to know them without any 
exercise of their own will. A boy doesn't care a button 
about strong and weak verbs, say. Well, I go on asking him 
about them, and making him conjugate strong verbs and weak 
till at last he can't help knowing them. If the crammer 
seizes on the right things he gets a certain amount into boys 
who would learn in no other way. In language teaching one 
is driven to cram in a certain amount in this way. 

" Next comes the man who can rouse his boys' emulation. 
This brings out much more of the boys' faculties and makes 
the work go with a will. 

" The highest kind of master is he who gets boys to work 
either because they like the master or like the work. One 
ought to make much more of personal influence. Boys will do 
anything for a man when an individual relationship has been 
set up between them. If the master wishes to get this influence 
he must make the boys feel that he looks at each boy as an 
individual and not merely as one of a class. Private talks with 
boys are very valuable in this way, especially when the master 
can find anything to praise. But conscious as I am of all this, 
and being as I am on the most friendly footing with the boys, 
I live in such a muddle that I don't seem to have time and 
attention to give to the individual boy." 

An Apology for Didactic Teaching 

" It seems almost impossible for one mind to be alive to 
opposite dangers. I am thoroughly impressed with the 
mischief of 'didactic teaching.' The old simile of a narrow- 
necked bottle under a pump seems to me to apply exactly. 
The consequence is that I say very little, and hardly expect 
my boys to remember the little I do say. I probably should 



266 R. H. Quick 

be a bad lecturer if I tried to lecture, but I never do try. I 
aim exclusively at getting boys' minds to work at things, in 
other words at developing power, but it ends more or less 
in their having to remember what they get straight out of 
their books. And my contempt for cram really leads almost 
to the slighting of knowledge. But the receptive faculties of 
the mind must after all be of some use. The parable of the 
Sower has no meaning to anyone who takes an extreme line 
against didactic teaching. Such a one seems to say, ' Never 
mind seed : plough and harrow and manure the land and the 
land will not want for seed.' But it may want seed, and seed 
may take root and bear fruit even when we hardly expect it. 
I believe I constantly make a great mistake in not reading 
more and seeking more intellectual nourishment. The fact of 
my liking reading gives it to me the appearance of amusement 
and I don't indulge in it because I have some work un- 
finished. 

" Of course when we come to giving information, one 
teacher gets the mind of the pupils to receive impressions from 
his mind, another affects the ears and the sensorium (isn't that 
the word?) only. Generally, speaking, I belong to the latter 
class. This morning I talked about the chapter in St Luke 
(the last) which the boys had prepared. By questions I after- 
wards found that very few boys had even been thinking of 
what I was saying : e.g. I pointed out that Christ must 
have overtaken, not met, the two disciples going to Emmaus ; 
yet five minutes after hardly a boy knew this. Sometimes I 
wonder whether it is possible that boys do not know the 
answers to simple questions, and whether the reason of their 
not answering is simply that they prefer letting their thoughts 
wander and not even asking themselves whether they can 
answer or not. One might partially detect this by asking 
occasionally ' What was the question ? ' but not wholly, for boys 
retain for some time the sound of the words they have heard, 
though they have not thought of the meaning. I am much 



Didactic Teaching 267 

more inclined to attribute this state of things to my own bad 
teaching than to the boys' dulness, for all boys cannot be dull, 
and yet there is only one boy in the form, or two at most, on 
whom I can count for intelligent answers, and even these boys 
are not always awake." 

Mechanical advantages 

" Thring's great discovery seems to have been the im- 
portance of machinery. ' Machinery won't give life.' True 
enough, and perhaps machinery is often used to conceal the 
want of life, but more commonly life is wasted for want of 
machinery. The more vigorous the master the more danger 
there seems of his turning vital force into merely mechanical 
functions. There is here a terrible waste from bad arrange- 
ments about exercises, &c, and all suffer from this waste. 
Where forms are very large mechanical advantages must be 
obtained somehow. In the Cowper Street Schools they have 
fifty or more in a form. Jowitt tells me the class-room is 
fitted up with a frame in which the exercise books can be 
displayed open side by side. The boys, when they come in, 
stick up their exercises. The master walks round, sees the 
neatness and kind of exercise at a glance. The boys take 
their books, and the master goes over the exercises with 
them." 

Interest the mainspring of teaching 

" I have thought a good deal about the way to teach 
language, but after all any way would do if one could excite 
in the pupil an eager desire to learn, and no way is good 
for much without this. Perhaps, indeed, there are limits. 
There might be some waste of force in a bad method with 
the most eager pupils, and something may be hammered into 
careless pupils by constant repetition of the most important 
things. Still enthusiasm is the thing wanted, and this is what 
in school work one fails to get. When the mind is aroused 



268 R. H. Quick 

and is on the lookout to observe and compare and store 
up, it acquires rapidly things that no amount of teaching 
can knock in. As Dr Brown says, ' Secure the help of the 
resident teacher. The different ways of teaching may be 
compared to the different forms of religion. The end of 
teaching is to excite the mind to work on the subject taught 
and to take it in.' Now, even supposing the Roman Catholic 
were the infallible Church, it would clearly be better to be a 
Quaker with love than a Roman Catholic without. And so 
the pupil who is interested will learn more on the worst system 
than the uninterested pupil on the best." 

Argumenta ad puerum 

"There is one person about whom everyone feels an 
interest and is very keen to hear remarks about him — every- 
one takes an interest in himself. This gives the teacher a 
power of which he may make very great use. If he can 
study the boys as individuals, he will often be able to send 
a shaft right into the bull's-eye by feathering it with a per- 
sonal allusion. The other day I remarked that very few 
boys showed intelligence in map-drawing, and that I only 
remembered tw r o or three boys who had been remarkably 
good in this respect, all of whom had left. There were, I 
said, a few still here whose maps were fairly intelligent, but 
not so good as those of Munro, &c, who had left. The 
boys pricked up their ears at this, and wanted to know who 
the present boys were. I declined to say. To-day I think 
I see the effect of this in some fairly successful efforts to show 
intelligence in maps of St Paul's journeys just done." 

No flagging 

" I believe no one can teach boys well or even tolerably 
so long as he has the least feeling of annoyance towards 
them. It is perhaps more fatal for the master to be irritated 
with the boys and out of sympathy with them, than for the 






Sympathetic Teaching 269 

boys to dislike the master. It is very odd to hear men who 
have been teaching years and years go on nevertheless de- 
claiming against boys' idleness, as if they had just made 
a brand-new discovery about them. I have felt about my 
Germ >n class that the cause of failure could not be in the 
boys ; they are the constant quantity (at least approximately 
constant) in the problem, and the variables are the teacher 
and the system of teaching. My irritation has arisen partly 
from overwork and want of relaxation, partly from constant 
headaches, partly from being victimised by a wretched time- 
table. Then, as the boys haven't got on a bit, my irrita- 
tion has extended to them, and the whole thing has been 
a wretched failure .... The main thing is to take one's boys 
with one, to make them feel (as they easily may) that one 
is anxious to get them on and is interested in them. The 
hammering, scolding, unsympathetic line is the ruin of every- 
thing — has been the ruin of much of my teaching. ... It is 
a great mistake to say that boys are idle. Boys are not idle. 
They are easily discouraged ; they conjure up all sorts of 
difficulties and they lack energy of thought, but so long as 
you give them work they can do, they take a pleasure in 
doing it. Sums, for instance, they will grind away at by the 
hour ; but, as I said, they can't think things out, and they 
do not understand going over the same ground again and again 
until they have mastered a subject. They don't know what 
thorough knowledge is, and they are always wanting to get on." 

A moot point {Principles v. routine. Feb. 25, '75) 

"What terribly puzzle-headed creatures we are, content to 
go on in a fog without making any effort to get out of it. 
For myself, I think this or that according to my last ex- 
perience or authority, an 1 don't seem to have come into the 
clear on any subject — -least of all on education. 

"The other day I was talking with Seeley. He doubted 



270 R. H. Quick 

the wisdom of systematising a child's occupations, as Froebel 
would do : things should not be cut and dried. With his 
own child he teaches just what offers ; lets her point out on 
the map where the Spaniards live, where the Russians &c, 
where the word Ocean is, and so on. He says that words 
may best be dealt with as things by themselves. If dog, cat 
are taken, the child's attention is drawn from the word to 
the thing. This, of course, is entirely opposed to what the 
chief theorists have said on the subject. 

" Last night we had a discussion on methods of teaching 
a language apropos of a lecture I gave last week. Mr Payne 
pointed out afterwards that principles were hardly touched 
upon. Each speaker advocated his own practice without 
any reference to principle. 'The learner,' says Mr Payne, 
' is lost sight of.' Then Mr Payne told how his own child 
had taught himself to read, had observed for himself, com- 
pared his observations, and so on. So one man would drill 
the child on a regular system, another would leave it to itself 
and watch, and the third, who has an actual child to deal 
with, finds himself obliged to do something, and in fact does 
just what happens to be the fashion. 

" R. Brudenell Carter, in his pamphlet on the ' Artificial 
Production of Stupidity,' argues with great force that our 
school teaching does more harm than good. This certainly 
does seem the case, whether one considers the method a 
priori or a posteriori. The altogether astounding stupidity 
of our big boys about their school-work would be impossible 
had not their stupidity been carefully nuitured. And. if the 
teaching of highly educated men has this effect, how much 
more must the teaching of the flabby, half-educated usher or 
governess produce stupidity. One sees and feels all this and 
would gladly cultivate intelligence, but how is it to be done? 
One does not know. Meanwhile one finds oneself with a lot 
of boys on one's hands, and they have to be taught some- 
how. One cannot wait till one sees how principles are to be 



Training Colleges 271 

applied ; one must go on, and as the right path is doubtful, 
there is nothing for it but to take the usual one. Yet the 
usual path is not by any means sure to be the right one. 
People get blinded by their business, and do any amount of 
stupid things which an outsider can detect. It would be 
easy to show from medicine, from architecture, &c. how use 
and wont blind the eyes. Of late years we schoolmasters 
have had our eyes opened to some absurdities. The use 
and wont of three centuries has not preserved the custom 
of making small boys learn. ' Cum duo substantiva diversae 
significationis, &c.' : but there are lots of similar absurdities 
which we still practise, and yet we scorn outsiders when they 
tell us they would like to see this or that altered. And in 
doing this we can point to the absurdities which the ablest 
men run into from taking ' principles ' to start with — Ruskin, 
for instance, who would have drawing lessons begin with 
shading, not with outlines — Pestalozzi, again, who says the 
child should be taught about that which is nearest, therefore 
about its own joints and liver. In instances like this the 
principle may be false, or the inference may be falsely drawn 
from it ; but, with our suspicion of abstract principles, we 
seldom stop to consider which is wrong, the principle or the 
inference, and we go straight off to the belief that use and 
wont is the only safe guide. But if we had our eyes open 
for them, there are reductiones ad absurdum here too. Surely 
in education they abound. The ordinary schoolboy of six- 
teen is the most flagrant reductio ad absurdum I know of. 
He has thoughts and interests and energies, but they are 
not connected with his school-work. The master tries to get 
him to think, but he won't. Something must be done, so, as 
thought seems out of the question, the boy must reproduce, 
and by practice the carrying power is soon developed. The 
boy loads himself with a lesson of any kind, comes into 
school, shoots it down before the master, and is delighted to 
get rid of it. And, absurd as this is, even men of sense and 



272 R. H. Qtuck 

culture get hardened to it and rest satisfied with it. We 
cannot therefore wonder that inferior men do the same. 
Then every few years the public wakes up to the fact that 
things are unsatisfactory and a great effort is made, but 
blind energy often does more harm than good. Bishop 
Fraser, in a late speech at Liverpool, declared his opinion 
that ' the general intelligence of our schools is deteriorating ; 
there is not really so much intelligence in them as there was 
five-and-twenty years ago.' Education, he says, is becoming 
more dry and mechanical, more and more a matter of rou- 
tine. Again, I hear that the percentage of failures at the 
London Matriculation Examinations goes on increasing. So 
everybody who thinks about education is dissatisfied, and our 
dissatisfaction inclines us to ' do something.' Sir J. Kay 
Shuttleworth and others are now trying to get up a training 
college for secondary masters. But, directly we come to 
consider what we mean by a training college, we are at sea 
again. Truth in this, as in most subjects, is as wild as the 
birds in November. We catch sight of it sometimes in the 
next field, but we get no chance of bagging it. The only 
fact I seem to have got hold of is that our primary masters 
as a rule go to work in a more workmanlike fashion than 
untrained masters. . . . But what do we purpose doing by 
means of a college for secondary masters? The question 
immediately arises, What class of secondary masters do you 
mean? There is a good deal of difference between a Uni- 
versity first class man and an usher who gets ^40 a year 
and his keep for looking after boys, and yet both may be 
included under secondary teachers, and so may infinite 
varieties between these two poles. If your college is for 
the upper half, you have knowledge and trained intellec- 
tual powers and have nothing to do but to direct them 
to the science and art of teaching. If your college is for 
the lower half, you must give the instruction which the 
students will have to give their pupils. In fact, the teaching 



Examination and Cramming 273 

of teaching will be only a subordinate part of the course. 
Which of these lines is to be the one adopted? No doubt 
it is very advisable that educators should themselves be edu- 
cated ; but if we undertake to supply deficiencies of this 
kind we are founding a teaching, not a training college ; and, 
so far as I can gather, this is what the Ecole Norm ale Supe- 
rieure is. If we want a college of this kind we need have 
no school attached. But if we want to teach the art of 
teaching, the practising school must be the main thing. No 
art can be taught by precepts. The teacher, like any other 
artist, must see how the proficient works, and must work 
himself under his direction." 

Cramming {apropos of a lecture by Mr Payne at the 
College of Preceptors, May 12, '75) 

" The right thing in education is to secure the intelligent 
action of the mind, i.e. either the reason or the imagination, 
on a subject. When the mind has been thus exercised, it 
will be sure to retain the knowledge of certain facts about 
that subject, and the absence of that knowledge proves that 
the mind has not been thus exercised. Unfortunately, how- 
ever, the converse does not hold ; hence the connection be- 
tween examinations and cramming. Suppose I pay a visit 
to a primary school. I want to know whether the children 
take an intelligent interest in their surroundings and in what 
goes on in the world. I ask them the name of the place 
they are in, its county, the nearest large towns, &c. I ask 
them whether there is a king or queen on the throne, what 
the queen's name is, who is her Prime Minister, &c. Now 
such questions give me the means of finding out whether the 
mind's eye is open or not. If I found the answers good, I 
might go on and ask who is Home Secretary, Chancellor of 
the Exchequer, &c. Of course I don't think that the names 
of Mr Cross and Sir Stafford Northcote are especially worth 



274 R- H> Quick 

the children's knowing, but by my questions I should pro- 
bably find out the two or three sharp boys who take an 
interest in politics. My tests then would act quite satis- 
factorily. But suppose I went about all the schools of a 
particular neighbourhood, asking the same kind of questions, 
and the masters got a notion of what was coming. They 
would immediately make their children learn up the names 
of the whole Cabinet. I should then find that the smallest 
child there could rattle off the whole list, and in a way might 
be said to know more than I did, for without cramming one 
knows only the names of the leading politicians. If I catch 
a moth and show it to a friend and he names it off-hand, I 
am probably not wrong in concluding that my friend knows 
about moths, and of course the more uncommon the moth, 
the more might be inferred from his acquaintance with it. 
But, supposing he has been prepared for an examination on 
moths, his coach may have crammed him in the particular 
genera on which the examiner has written a monograph, so 
that his answer would be worth very little. This shows the 
weak point of examinations. . . . Directly you make the ex- 
aminer one man and the instructor another, the instructor 
has to prepare his pupils to impress the examiner, and their 
answers may be no real index of their knowledge or their in- 
telligence. Still a competent examiner might find out whether 
the study had been carried on with interest and intelligence. 
He might do this even by paper-work, and still more easily 
by viva voce, but he is generally required to do what is in 
effect incompatible with investigations of this kind, viz. to 
award marks for each answer and arrange the examined in 
order of merit. In his anxiety to do this with perfect fair- 
ness, he sets questions which admit of the most definite 
answers, and if the answers are right, gives full marks for 
them. So in most subjects the examiner tests memory (often 
mere memory of words) only, and the crammed do much 
better in the paper than those who have studied the subject 



Experience of individual boys 275 

intelligently. The bane of all intellectual instruction is then 
this, that memory-work can be easily tested and accurately 
marked ; other efforts of the mind are not so easily tested, 
and cannot be so accurately gauged. I myself see no way 
of escape from the pernicious influence of this except by 
taking as examination subjects only such things as cannot 
be crammed : mathematics, unprepared translation, compo- 
sition, and the like. Such things as history, geography, 
English literature, should be taken in school and elsewhere 
as unprepared subjects, the teacher seeking to interest the 
pupils, and not troubling himself about any test of results." 

Varied experience necessary for the Teacher 

Herbart discusses the question, on what conditions can 
pedagogic discussion be useful, and lays down that (1) there 
must be fixed principles to start from and to test everything by ; 
(2) everyone who speaks must have had pedagogic experience, 
and this experience must have been acquired from pupils of 
different ages, ' denn kein Alter zeigt die Beschaffenheit des 
andern.' Now nobody here [at Harrow] seems to think of 
this need of varied experience. I myself have had great 
opportunities, but have made very poor use of them. All my 
energy (which never was very great) has gone off into mere 
teaching. I like boys' society and do take an interest in my 
fellows after a fashion, but I am always so overwhelmed with 
exercises and preparation of lessons, &c, that I cannot find 
time for the study of the individual boy. I am never au 
dessus, so I can't spare time for doing what I am really fond of 
doing — giving attention to separate boys. The other day at 
Harrow I found that John, our servant boy, did not know 
fractions. In two lessons I made him understand them ail 
right, and in two more he was able to work any ordinary 
fraction sum. But when one has a form one cannot watch the 
workings of the individual mind. Form teaching is a thing by 



276 R. H. Quick 

itself. We do get some skill in thus dealing with boys in 
numbers, but in this way we learn little more about their minds 
than a drill sergeant learns about their bodies. 

" Turning again to Herbart I find my own remarks con- 
firmed by him : Entwurf zur Anlegung ernes p'adagogischen 
Seminarii, Pad. Schriften, note, p. 16 : ' Experience must be 
gained by long and close observation of individuals ; otherwise 
it is impossible to get beyond the surface (ins Innere blicken). 
In schools where the teacher can pay but little attention to 
individuals, all appear far less docile (bildsam) than they really 
are, for only that small quantum of docility is revealed which 
responds to the short and cursory attention that the teacher 
can devote to the individual. In order to observe the strong 
mutual influence of the scholars one on another, the teacher 
must be a practised observer, or it will wholly escape his 
notice. The schoolmaster generally is inclined to consider his 
class as the historian does a nation, i.e. as a mass of human 
beings concerning which he has to form in his mind a collec- 
tive impression. This collective impression blurs or destroys 
his impression of each individual. . . . Teachers in public 
institutions gain a vast number of observations of pupils of all 
sorts and kinds, but this is only a surface knowledge of what 
shows itself in school, and only in relation to discipline and 
learning, with the rare exception of such scholars as readily 
display their real nature. In like manner the historian regards 
men in relation to events ; what has no historical consequence 
he does not regard and deems of no account (p. 300) . He goes 
on to find fault with Fichte's ideal of great schools in which 
boys form their own community. The boys make observations 
enough and acquire knowledge of the world (Menschenkenntnis') , 
some of which they might well do without as long as possible. 
They acquire a corporate feeling among themselves ; some 
obey, some command. Good muscles and a bold front secure 
the lead. The cunning get others to carry out their plans. 
All are bound to do some things as points of honour, among 



Desu Itorin ess 277 

them secrecy and mutual help in need. So far I agree with 
Herbart, but when he goes on to say that the larger such a 
society the more harshly it must be governed and the more the 
boys will desire to tyrannise when they get the chance, I can 
go with him no longer. I think all the worst features of the 
conspiracy (for such it is) of boys against masters are found in 
the smaller schools, and that the corporate feeling in large 
schools is a much nobler thing, at least has much nobler 
elements in it. At Harrow boys govern themselves, and as a 
rule they do so with very good effect. They do not come 
across the repression of masters at every turn, so there is not 
much thought and energy thrown into a systematic effort to 
cheat them. It is the whole system that restrains them, not 
the arbitrary power of the masters. If the boys think the 
master or even the body of masters are infringing the hereditary 
rights and customs of the school, there is strong resistance im- 
mediately. There is also a tendency to insurge if a monitor or 
sixth form boy exceeds his powers, but I think the boys would 
take display of arbitrary power more calmly from boys than 
from masters." 

Desidtoriness 

" D. Fearon, in his School Inspection, is very emphatic about 
preparing lessons and keeping a log book. One of the great 
weaknesses of my work is that it is not properly arranged 
beforehand. Covvper is sarcastic about the schoolmaster who 
is ' governed by the clock,' but for my part I think the school- 
master should be so governed, and my work would be much 
better if the clock were more attended to and wound up more 
regularly. The great danger of all teachers interested in their 
work is the danger of being desultory. One thinks the boys 
should be taught so and so, or something occurs to one as 
useful and interesting, and one goes into it on the spot ; but 
other things succeed and one forgets or neglects what one 
began. Things require to be thought out beforehand and 



278 R. H. Quick 

then kept to in school, and the subjects of the lesson carefully 
recorded." 

Correction of exercises 

11 A clear conception of aims and prearrangement as to the 
means of securing them, important everywhere, are especially 
important in the schoolroom. My great weakness is that 
things are not arranged beforehand, and I am generally so 
clogged with exercises, &c, unlooked over that my attention 
seems always engrossed with the past and has no time for the 
future. It is a great snare to set boys things to do on paper 
without remembering the time that should be spent on the 
papers when written. The worst plan of all is to ' collect ' 
exercises and give them back corrected the next day or latef. 
It's no use striking when the iron has cooled'. I'm inclined to 
think the boys should come up with their exercises, the master 
first glance at each and mark for neatness and rough impres- 
sion, then work the thing through with the black-board." 



Classification of boys 

" 28. 5. 77. On Friday the second meeting of the London 
U. U.'s 1 took place at Eve's. The subject was classification of 
boys : a very hard subject. Eve treated the three possible 
solutions, (1) the class system, (2) the free system, (3) com- 
promise. The Germans, Wiese tells us, have since 1830 had a 
rigid class system. It is very hard to understand how clever 
boys and dull boys, boys who like classics and hate mathe- 
matics, and boys with exactly the opposite tastes, can be kept 
together year after year in all subjects. The Germans are 
influenced by their desire for the equal development of the 
whole man. The free system is in vogue at University College 

1 A small society of London masters who met periodically to discuss 
professional questions. 



Classification of boys 279 

School, and the men seem to like it. But it has great draw- 
backs. There is no one to be responsible for the individual 
boy. Eve has tried to remedy the defect by a kind of quasi- 
tutorial system, but the tie must be a weak one. The 
advantage of giving a master a special subject is really very 
doubtful. With older pupils a man may be led to study the 
subject carefully, but with boys the master's knowledge and 
grasp is so far beyond the pupil's that the master is not stimu- 
lated at all. It was said on Friday that the one-subject master 
would get to think more of his subject than of the learners, 
but I should say he would be more likely to settle down into 
a routine course with little life in it. This seems to have been 
the case with mathematical masters in our public schools. It 
is, I think, an exceedingly bad thing for masters to be 
constantly teaching the same thing. Some people hold that 
he should have advanced pupils as well as beginners. I do 
not think this would pay in most cases. The man would 
either get to despise the beginners or to neglect the advanced 
pupils. The one great advantage of the free system is that it 
gives each boy so many more chances of distinguishing him- 
self. At Clifton the classical and mathematical forms are 
kept quite distinct, and sixth form privileges are given to both 
sixths. The compromise at Harrow, and most of the large 
public schools, is to cut groups of forms into mathematical sets 
and let mathematical marks count to some extent in placing. 
All placing is done very roughly at Harrow, even when the 
marks are added up without mistake, which probably does not 
very often happen. I don't much believe myself in equating 
marks ; it never seems fair to the boys. Clever boys who 
never fail in anything of course don't suffer, and industrious 
boys who do their best all round benefit by the system ; but 
boys who might do very well in particular subjects are injured 
and discouraged. Walker seems to have gone on a very free 
system at Manchester. He had boys at the top of the school 
doing 15 hours a week of mathematics in school, and others 



280 R. H. Quick 

giving the same time to natural science. He was always noted 
for the amount of work he got out of boys. When one hears the 
amount of work Abbott or Walker get out of their sixth form 
boys one wonders that Eton and Harrow are anywhere in the 
race for honours. Abbott said he expected his boys to work 
at the least three hours in the evening for him, and Walker 
said sardonically, ' We get more than three hours out of them 
at Manchester.' Abbott's boys have great liberty of study, for 
they are treated like so many private pupils, and as they are 
poor boys who have great pressure on them from their circum- 
stances they work without pressure from the masters." 

Learning by rote 

" Weymouth l has lately shocked the Education Society by 
maintaining that the multiplication table must be driven in. 
The E. S. people hold that it should be made an intellectual 
exercise. But it never seems to occur to the zealots of intel- 
lectual exercises that these exercises take time. If we had to 
do everything by an intellectual effort we should hardly have 
got through the process of dressing before it was time to 
undress again. In the same way if we treat the multiplication 
table as an intellectual exercise, the boys would never know 
it in the sense of being able instantly to give the multiple of 
any two numbers, and the art of arithmetic would never be 
possible. The multiplication must be learnt so as to be used 
as mere consecutive sounds." 



Science and Art in Education 

" 20. 6. 78. In the lecture I have spoken of above I 
intended to work out, but could not for want of time, the need 
of an art of education which might be acquired without the 

1 Dr R. F. Weymouth, then headmaster of the Mill Hill School. 



Science and Art 281 

science. Where there is an art it may be derived from the 
corresponding science or practised empirically. If it is good 
it will justify itself when principles are appealed to, but it is 
always exercised without thought of principles. In arithmetic, 
for instance, we never think of principles in working a sum. 
The practice may, as in this case, arise out of the principles, 
but when once formed it goes of itself, so to speak, and there 
is no need to be constantly thinking of principles. 

" Now in education, or rather in instruction, we have an art, 
but it is a bad one ; it has been arrived at empirically and will 
not stand testing by principles. But many who are dissatisfied 
with this art seem to think that it may be swept away, and that 
principles or theory will serve them better. But principles 
won't do by themselves. We want an art, an art correspond- 
ing with the principles but capable of working without con- 
stant reference to them. When Pestalozzi was examined about 
his system, some said, 'Vous voulez mechaniser l'education.' 
Now this, one would have said, was the very opposite of the 
truth. Pestalozzi found the so-called education of his day a 
mere mechanical routine, and he sought to make it living, not 
mechanical. Yet P. accepted this description of his efforts 
and said, ' Yes, that is just what I do want, I want to mechanise 
education, for we must remember that even if principles would 
give us always right practice, principles will not be properly 
apprehended by a vast number of people who must teach. 
These people must fall back on the practice they have been 
taught.' 

" It often happens then that men like Mr Payne cannot 
introduce much change even into their old schools. There is 
the old art which their assistants know. The new art has first 
to be invented, then taught. This is too much for one man to 
attempt, so there is nothing for it but to accept received 
methods. And even when one has some insight into principles, 
one cannot see in all cases what would be the corresponding 
practice. The work of the schoolroom takes a good deal out 



282 R. H. Quick 

of one. At the time one stands in need of some established 
habit, of some ' art,' to get one through, so we must aim at 
mechanising education, or rather instruction, at getting a good 
practice which will run of itself." 



Books for Teachers 

" 7. 8. 79. Little or nothing has been done in the way of 
assisting the teacher as distinct from the pupil. Keys to 
exercises, to be sure, are issued ' to teachers only ' according 
to advertisements, but these are the only books for teachers I 
know of. The general notion is that teachers should do every- 
thing for themselves, read their subjects up carefully, make up 
their own questions, &c, &c. As a fact, teachers will not take 
the trouble, and books written expressly for them would, I 
fancy, not make them more careless than they are. Such 
books too would prevent the desultoriness which makes most 
questioning fruitless for teaching, though not for examining 
purposes. By teaching I here mean getting right conceptions 
in the mind of the pupil and fixing them there. Questions are 
very efficacious in doing this. First, they prepare the mind for 
the conception by making the need felt. In some cases the 
mind may be led up to the right conception by a judicious 
series of questions. Then when the conception is obtained it 
may be used in various connections in answer to fresh questions. 
But when the right conception exists in the pupil's mind, the 
teacher's work is not more than half done. The concept must 
be so fixed in the mind that it may be readily brought into 
consciousness when wanted. In consideration of these facts I 
think the best plan would be for the teacher to go over his 
subject beforehand and write questions to it. These questions 
should be divisible into classes according to settled types. 
Of course additional questions should be asked aus de??i 
Stegreif, but they should conform to the types. Desultory 
questioning takes more time than it is worth. But as teachers 



Girls Schools 283 

will not thus arrange their questions or even their types of 
questions beforehand, I think books of questions would be 
of use to them. The great advantage of having black on 
white is that back questions can be asked each lesson." 



Girls' Schools 

" The teaching of girls seems carried on in a more stupid 
way than even that of boys. Dates form a branch of instruction. 
M. R. (just ten) has learnt her dates, and says she remembers 
the dates but can never remember the events to them. When 
we asked 1066? she said, ' Queen Victoria came to the throne.' 
In fact schoolmistresses try to get into children's memories 
mere arbitrary connections of sounds. Then there is the learn- 
ing of the rules of French grammar, which children are utterly 
unable to apply, and which belong to a stage in the language 
which they will not reach for years. 

" As I was taking Masie through Trinity College, and she 
was asking what I did at College, she said, ' I thought College 
was like school, only difficulter.' " 



Fluelleri's Leek 

" Schoolmasters of the old school used to make a great 
point of giving boys work they did not like. They said it was 
good for boys to be made to apply themselves to unpleasant 
tasks : then they learnt masteries, &c. : it was an utter mistake 
on the part of the master to try to make things pleasant. 
In fact they commended the Latin Grammar to their pupils 
in much the same terms as Fluellen commends the leek to 
Pistol — ' I peseech you heartily, scurvy, lousy knave, at my 
desires, and my requests, and my petitions, to eat, look you, 
this leek : because, look you, you do not love it, nor your 
affections, and your appetites, and your digestions, does not 



284 R. H. Quick 

agree with it, I would desire you to eat it.' This was practi- 
cally their line, and they then betook themselves to Fluellen's 
forcible means of persuasion." 

Two kinds of bad Teachers 

" Unsuccessful teachers may be divided generally into those 
who have no clear conceptions in their own minds and those 
who, having clear conceptions in their own minds, take it for 
granted that the same clearness must exist in their pupils' 
minds, or at least may be brought about easily and quickly. 
When a first-class classic or a high wrangler is put to teach 
young and backward boys, he seldom gives his pupils anything 
that they really understand. He takes all elementary con- 
ceptions for granted. On the other hand, people of the 
usher and governess class have no notion what clear perception 
is, so they naturally do not cultivate it in their pupils. As it 
seems to me, we cannot be too careful to see whether we our- 
selves know exactly what we mean by the words we use, and 
whether our pupils know what we mean. The notion of the 
verb, the difference between a transitive and intransitive verb, 
and between active and passive voice does not get clear in 
most children's minds for years after they are supposed to be 
quite familiar with it." 

How to create interest 

" 2 July, '82. In small things as in great, success and 
failure often depend on trifles. To-day (Sunday) I wanted to 
show three small boys and Masie some stereoscopic slides, 
and I had only one stereoscope. I chose what seemed to me 
the most interesting and passed round the stereoscope. The 
boys showed little sign of interest and chattered and played 
when they passed the stereoscope. There were a good many 
slides — far too many for all to be seen, so I started the plan of 



Interest 285 

sending round a dozen or so at a time and letting each boy 
choose a photograph for the next to be looked at, those not 
chosen being put back in the box. The plan took capitally ; the 
boys were engaged in choosing when not looking through the 
stereoscope. They seemed to have a share in what was going 
on and so were interested in it, in the derivative sense of the 
word and in every sense. We might, I think, learn a valuable 
lesson from the derivation of interest. If the boy feels he 
counts for something more than a mere recipient, and that he 
has a share, whether by his choice or by his activity in what is 
going on, forthwith he is interested. I have often brought 
their choice in by letting them select what poetry they should 
learn by heart from a number of pieces I have read to them." 



Making things pleasant in school 

"4. 7. 82. Most scholastic people have a dread of making 
things in school too pleasant. A friend of mine who keeps a 
day school has had parents complain that the boys liked their 
school work. They evidently thought that anything that was 
pleasant could not be work. So think not I. I believe that 
dull work is necessarily bad work, work in which most of the 
powers of the mind are dormant. However hard the work 
there will be some satisfaction in it if it be genuine ; and this 
is a kind of pleasure. But the satisfaction felt in vigorous 
exertion of course ceases when the mind begins to flag, and in 
school there must be a great deal of employment which is not 
hard work. This must be enlivened by all manner of devices. 
To-day I have been trying some new races with my scratch 
pairs." 

Repetition the mother of studies 

" 19. 9. 82. One of the main problems in teaching is how to 
get things remembered that are useful but not interesting. The 



286 R. H. Quick 

ordinary instance is the multiplication table. This is acquired 
by repetition, and nobody who has not taught knows what a 
tremendous amount of repetition is required. But it seems 
impossible to give so much repetition to everything, and yet 
without it things slide. 

" To-day Mr W. gave his first music lesson to three of my 
boys. We have taught them what key has one sharp, two 
sharps, and the like information over and over again, and they 
have not seemed inattentive and have answered rightly when 
questioned, but to-day after a few weeks' interval everything 
seems to have vanished from their minds. Here is a difficulty. 
Everything can be fixed by sufficient repetition, but the amount 
of repetition required when the fixture is due to repetition 
only is so enormous that life is not long enough for it. Most 
teachers try to get more remembered than can be repeated 
enough, so most is lost. We should stick to essentials, and 
these we must fix by requiring the minds of our pupils to 
reproduce them incessantly long after they ' know ' them. The 
old man in Marryat's novel who kept breaking in with his 
' How's her head ? ' was a good teacher of the mechanical part 
of learning. But the amount of necessary repetition may be 
reduced if there is any keen desire to learn. Hence the appli- 
cation of rewards and punishments. The old plan of boxing 
a boy's ears or caning him every time he failed to answer a 
question on anything he had learnt by heart no doubt had 
some effect in the mechanical part of learning, but it deadened 
all the other parts of the mind. One great danger must be 
borne in mind as to mechanical learning, viz. that when the 
master thinks the thing is fixed, the only thing fixed may be 
empty sounds." 

Teaching in a small area 

" 10. 10. 82. Success in teaching depends in a great meas- 
ure on taking a very small area and carefully keeping out of 



Follow-my- leader 287 

sight {i.e. the pupil's sight) everything beyond it. Get the 
learner's mind to move about easily and accurately in that 
area, and he will be prepared for subsequent extensions. But 
if he is inaccurate in his small area, he will never take a safe 
step in a larger. 

" Some teachers try to drive in the thick end of the wedge 
first to ensure its all going in." 

Class Teaching, a game of Follow-my -leader 

"8. 11. 83. Every great author we read becomes for the 
time the leader of our minds, and we think for the most part 
just what he pleases. This is still more the case when a 
true teacher stands before a class. He plays with them a 
game of ' follow-my-leader,' only it is a game of great skill — 
skill in the teacher at least. He has to see that all follow, 
and more than this, he gives a lead and then has to get the 
class to follow, not by telling, but by questioning. Of course 
this involves far more than one can get from the ordinary 
teacher. It involves first of all that the teacher must be 
clever in hitting on a series of mental motions such as the 
class can take after him. And then much skill is needed 
in framing a series of questions which will lead the class to 
the desired movement. But your ordinary teacher is not a 
thinker, and so makes no mental movements in advance. 
What, then, is to be done ? He can't stand before the class 
and get nothing from them ; the posture would be ludicrous. 
He therefore falls back on words which he knows by heart 
or can get from a book without thinking. He avails himself 
of the tendency in children and adults alike to run along 
any familiar sequence. So his form of question is, ' How 

doth the little busy bee improve each shining ?' and the 

children roar in chorus ' Hour ! ' If he were to say, ' When 
would you call an hour a shining hour? Is this a shining 
hour?' &c. &c, he would not get a single answer. There 
would be awkward pauses." 



288 R. H. Quick 

Learning should be focussed 

"Most subjects become intensely interesting when you 
know a good deal about them, and are intensely dull when 
you only know a little. This is specially true of geography 
and history. An old illustration of mine, suggested by fire- 
lighting experiences at Ingatestone, is a good illustration of 
the right way of teaching these subjects. Get up a great 
heat in one spot and trust to its spreading of itself. The 
same amount of heat, if scattered, would simply go out. In 
teaching geography we might get boys to know one map, say 
England, well. They would thus have learnt what a delightful 
thing a map is." 

A Teacher's failures 

."21 Jan. '84. I have this evening failed in the night- 
school in giving a lesson on fractions just as the veriest tiro 
might fail. 

" I explained too much and did not make the lads work 
out things for themselves. It is so much easier to explain, 
and we never can persuade ourselves that what we under- 
stand we can't explain to others. But our understanding has 
come to us little by little over a long period, perhaps years. 
We can't get learners to reach our standpoint in a few 
minutes per saltum. The only way is to get them to work 
out each step for themselves, and the true teacher is shown 
by his analysing the process and seeing that one intellectual 
step has actually been taken and the learner at home on that 
level before the next step up is attempted." 

Practice makes imperfect 

" ' Men continually commit their most blameworthy acts 
in the mere dulness of habit, and are like dogs taught to 
pilfer, in whom we pardon to the imperfect nature what 



Anschauung 289 

would be unpardonable in a rational one.' Ruskin's Notes on 
Pictures in Academy Exhibition, 1856. 

" Ruskin is speaking of bad painters, but his remark is 
equally true of teachers. When we try to get teachers to 
think about their occupation we are often told, ■ Oh, we don't 
want your theorists. Practice is everything.' Practice is not 
everything. Practice, when it means doing the usual thing, 
often blinds the teacher to the most glaring absurdities. For 
three centuries teachers insisted on all boys learning the 
Propria quae maribus, though, as someone said the other 
day at Birmingham, it was often found that boys who could 
rattle off the Propria never got the gender of a Latin sub- 
stantive right. The ' dulness of habit ' perpetuates all sorts 
of silly lessons, and turns what should be the most delightful 
of occupations into one of the dreariest and most stupefying 
to all concerned in it." 

Anschauung 

" 27. 3. 84. All the Germans, and now at last the French, 
have learnt of the thinkers about education that all instruction, 
at least in the first stages, must be anschaulich, intuitive, must 
start from contact with the thing itself; but these theoretical 
notions have not crossed the Channel yet. But no great im- 
provement can be made in the English schoolroom till they 
do. Our Training Colleges seem to bring all teachers into 
bondage to the weak and beggarly elements, the three R's ; and 
the teachers, having learnt little about things themselves and 
a great deal about signs, teach the children about signs only/' 

J. S. Mill on Education 
(from Caroline Fox's Memories of Old Friends) 

" Mill does not like things to be made too easy or too 
agreeable to children ; the plums should not be picked out 



290 R. H. Qttick 

for them, or it is very doubtful if they will ever be at the 
trouble of learning what is less pleasant. 

" In my opinion you might as well say that children 
ought to be compelled to swallow nauseous things or they 
will never take physic when they become their own masters. 
It is nonsense to -suppose things can be made too easy for 
children. Of course the mental act necessary for real learning 
may be shirked altogether, but this is not making learning too 
easy, but giving up learning. If there is no pleasure either 
from the thing learnt or from the intellectual exercise of 
learning, the lesson is a failure." 



How a Teacher should live 

" There is a capital article on this in the Journal of Edu- 
cation, Oct. '85. ' It is not enough to light your lamp, you 
must supply it with oil.' 

"True, but generally speaking the teacher has lost interest 
in the subject, an und fur sick. ' Nom. is, ea, id. Ace. eum, 
earn, id. 7 I have known this so long that it affects my mind 
no otherwise than ' fee-fi-fo-fum.' Very often teachers get to 
hate the crambe repetita, and teaching others what bores one- 
self must be dismal work indeed. But with Latin I have 
such an interest in the progress of the boys that I never tire 
of teaching them what I know is essential. I'm inclined to 
think the writer makes too much of fresh ideas for enabling 
a teacher to teach. If he is interested in his work and does 
not try to teach too much, he will probably succeed. Intel- 
lectual freshness can't be kept up in teaching boys five hours 
a day. But it may last out part of the five hours — say two 
hours. The reason I should insist on short hours of toil 
and pleasant recreation is that not only good temper, but 
good spirits are essential in a teacher who is to manage a 
form properly." 



A cricketer on teaching 291 



Importance of the Why in learning 

" Instructors generally seem to think that, so long as the 
mind takes a right conception, it is not of the smallest con- 
sequence why the mind takes it in. For instance, the school- 
master of our youth set us to learn tristis. We had to go on 
saying ' hie haec tristis, hoc triste ' till we ' knew ' it. To know 
a thing in school language meant to be able to rattle it off 
without thinking. If the method was imperfect and we said 
' Ablative triste,' the method in vogue was to jog our memories 
by help of the cane. No doubt the method gained its end, 
and fear of the cane helped us to remember that the ablative 
was tristi. But the schoolboy did not learn to decline tristis 
in order to know the declension of Latin adjectives in -is, so 
when he was asked what is the ablative of similis he had no 
notion, and it was only after much loss of time and renewed 
application that the connection between tristis and other words 
was arrived at. So after all, it makes a difference why the 
mind admits a conception." 



Spofforth on Practice 

" 9 June '86. I have often tried to point out that practice 
does not make perfect unless it is careful and well-directed 
practice. Spofforth, the Australian bowler, gives his views in 
the Pall Mall Gazette of yesterday, and tells us he does not 
practise much except in actual play for fear of practising care- 
lessly. ' I have always found I require the stimulus and ex- 
citement of a match to put me on my mettle. If I practise 
at a net in the usual way one is apt to become careless. . . . 
So I hold — please remember this is only my own opinion — 
that practice, unless very thorough, very much in earnest, 
is not good, as it tends to become careless and slovenly, 
and teaches bad habits which are with difficulty eradicated.' 



292 R. H, Quick 

Spofforth seems a thinking kind of person. ' Bowl with 
brains ' is his recipe. He thinks of the effect of each ball, 
changes his pace and manner, &c. When asked about a 
great bowler being born, not made, he said this was all 
stuff. He was ambitious and thought he would make him- 
self a good bowler, and studied the thing as a problem. 
He thought out this and that move, then came and got 
criticised by the best English professional there was out in 
Australia. 'Thus I was constantly trying, first as a mental 
problem, then as a practical result.' He says, moreover, that 
for a long time he imitated first one man, then another. 
" De tefabula, magister ! " 

A dog-fancier on Training 



a 



25. 8. 86. Yesterday I was talking with a very skilful 
dog-trainer. He often buys a dog for -£i, and after a fort- 
night's training sells it for ^15. I asked him how he did it. 
1 Well, Sir,' he said, ' it takes a deal of patience. You must 
never get vexed with a dog. I've known a lot of dogs spoilt 
through the man losing patience with them and giving them 
the whip at the wrong time.' " 

Natural Science Teaching 

"W. Tuckwell has a paper in Nature (4 Nov. '69) on 
teaching natural science in schools. He says the true maxim 
is that of Socrates, that no true instruction can be bestowed 
on learners, 7rapa rov \m) apiaKovros, by a teacher who does 
not give them pleasure. Boys make nothing their own so 
thoroughly as that which they select for themselves. 

" One point has struck me very forcibly in my own expe- 
rience, viz. the unexpected value of general culture in teaching 
special subjects. The man who knows science admirably, but 
knows nothing else, prepares boys well for an examination, 



Jesuit Education 293 

but his teaching does not stick. The man of wide culture 
and refinement brings fewer pupils up to a given mark within 
a given time, but what he has taught remains with them ; they 
never forget or fall back. I am not sure that I understand 
the phenomenon, but I have noted it repeatedly." 

Jesuit Education 

" 16. 8. 88. The Jesuit notion of education was like the 
drill-sergeant. The drill-sergeant cares nothing for the in- 
dividual as such ; his care is for the regiment. But the 
regiment is composed of individuals. Any weakness in an 
individual is a weakness to the regiment, and any excellence 
in an individual in certain lines benefits the regiment. What 
the sergeant aims at is turning out men of a peculiar type 
who have learnt to work together, and by their united action 
get a kind of strength that no number of individuals would 
have as atoms. So the kind of education is fixed and limited 
by the end. The notion of the Jesuits was this of gaining 
force by welding individuals into a body. The body was 
everything ; the individual, except with reference to the body, 
was nothing. Most other systems of education regard the 
individual. If the subject of education is, as Locke says, 
wax in the hands of the educator, the ideal to which he is 
to be wrought must be settled by the educator. According 
to Addison, the educator works as it were on a block of 
marble and sets free the idea that is potentially contained 
in it. The question arises, Where is this idea? There is 
nothing to fix it but the mind of the sculptor, and, as some 
one has said, he is a destroyer no less than a creator, for 
in bringing one idea out of the marble he destroys a thou- 
sand other ideas that were also contained in it. These wax 
and marble notions have now given way to a very different 
order of idea. The child is neither wax nor marble, and 
he does not take his form and shape from the educator. 



294 R- H, Qtiick 

He is a plant, the idea of which exists quite independently 
of the educator. All that can be done is to secure for the 
plant the conditions favourable to growth and to guard it 
from injury. This metaphor seems to us a far better one 
than the others, but still quite inadequate. It fails in two 
ways. First the plant may reach its perfection, but the man 
cannot reach his. It has become a kind of common-place 
with educational people to say education should secure the 
symmetrical development of all the powers of mind and 
body. But such an ideal is wholly unrealisable. None of 
our powers can be developed in perfection, some cannot be 
developed at all. If we wanted to develop a boy's powers 
of sight and hearing, we ought to give him a training like 
that of the savage. I have known a boy from Ashanti over- 
hear a conversation that would have been inarticulate, if not 
inaudible, to any European ears. But this boy's thinking 
powers were much below those of an English bumpkin. 
Some of our powers we neglect entirely. Japanese jugglers 
show what we might do with our toes, but I never heard 
the most advanced educationist recommend toe exercises. 
Mr Ruskin has somewhere recommended the cultivation of 
the palate, but it is one of the queer suggestions that have 
made some people doubt his sanity. And if we must to 
some extent neglect our bodily powers, still more must we 
despair of thoroughly cultivating all the powers of our mind. 
So the notion of complete harmonious development has as 
much reality in it as proposals for a calculus of the fourth 
dimension. Secondly, the vegetable kingdom gives us no 
analogy for the most striking fact of social life, the inter- 
action of human beings on one another. We do, indeed, 
think of aggregates and overlook individuals when we speak 
of a forest, a corn-field, or a meadow. The individual ear of 
corn or blade of grass would not indeed be likely to thrive 
alone, but it springs up independently of its fellows, takes 
nothing from them and gives them nothing, except to a 



Electrobiology 295 

limited extent the support of contiguity. But we are what 
we are through the action of others on us and our action 
on them. Casper Hauser shows us what a human being 
may grow up if cut off from his fellows. Rousseau's prin- 
ciples, if logically carried out, would, as it seems to me, pro- 
duce Casper Hausers. All evil, he says, comes to us from 
the action of our fellow-creatures. Therefore Emile is to be 
cut off from everyone but his tutor. But the exception is 
inconsequent. Perhaps Rousseau might have said, ' It is the 
mischief from bad or foolish companions that I dread. I 
can hope to get a single wise man, but not more than one.' 
But Rousseau rails at everything that has come of the action 
of human beings on each other ; he does not confine himself 
to corruptions. We must get free from human influences. 
The only influence he allows in the bringing up is his own. 
But the thing is purely chimerical. The child will be affected 
by what he says and does to others, and by what they say and 
do to him. And everything in education must take into account 
this interaction." 

The Master's electrobiology 

" The phenomena of electrobiology are constantly observ- 
able on a small scale in form teaching. The will of the master 
has an electrical effect on the boys. When I was overworked 
here I never could prevent talking in school. Setting lines 
proved no cure whatever. I now never think of setting lines, 
and I have no trouble whatever with talking. The thing seems 
to me impossible, and consequently it seems impossible to the 
boys. I rarely observe a whisper, and when I do, a glance stops 
it. I now have a form twice a week who belong to the classical 
side, and come to me these two hours only. They are a good 
set of boys, and I have not the smallest trouble with them. 
To-day I was unwell, and one boy who came without his book 
did talk to his neighbour several times. I tried a plan which 



296 R. H. Qtiick 

seems to me better than speaking at the time when one sees 
anything amiss. I took not the slightest notice of this whisper- 
ing till the lesson was over. I then told the form that I was 
very much pleased by their general behaviour, but I was sorry 
to say there had been one exception. One boy had been 
behaving badly. C. had come to school without a book, which 
was an accident ; but having done this, he had made himself a 
perfect nuisance by whispering to his neighbour. An harangue 
of this kind is more efficacious than lines. Sometimes I don't 
mention the boy I am referring to, but to-day the case was a 
bad one, and, like the Speaker of the House of Commons, 
I named him. At another school I saw a boy put a lozenge 
in his mouth. I asked him soon after what he had in his 
mouth. He was in the Fifth and didn't like having to an- 
nounce what it was. I told him it seemed to me very silly, 
childish conduct for a Fifth Form boy to be sucking lollipops 
in school. As the boy was not a leader who could carry off 
such a public rebuke with a high hand, I fancy he would sooner 
have had lines. One must, of course, vary one's reproof ac- 
cording to the boy. The plan of not speaking at the time one 
sees small matters of this kind and of referring to them after- 
wards is very effective. Directly a boy feels that he does not 
know what you have observed and what you have not, he 
begins to fancy that you observe everything." 



Child Nature 297 

CHILD NATURE 

Gentleness in a Teacher 

" Every decade weakens the force of our impressions till 
' we feel but half, and feebly what we feel/ and, as Jean Paul 
says, it takes heaven itself to impress us. And, as we meas- 
ure others by ourselves, we do not think how vivid are the 
impressions we are making on the children around us. 

" A little while ago a child was sent to get something out 
of a locker so situated that the operation disturbed the class 
I was teaching. While the locker was resting on his head, I 
patted him with it gently and said impatiently, ' Make haste, 
make haste ! ' The poor child burst into an agony of tears, 
and it all at once dawned on me that I was an ogre into 
whose den the child had come with the keenest apprehensions 
of the consequences." 

Unkindness to children 

" It makes one's heart ache when one thinks of children 
being unkindly treated. The least semblance of unkindness 
affects our children and makes them miserable. The other 
day Dora had put on Oliver's pinafore and was playing at 
being Oliver. Just as his mother was joining in the game, 
she said, ' Get along with you, little Oliver ! ' Oliver himself 
happened to come to the door, and, supposing that his mother 
was addressing the real Oliver, burst into a flood of tears, and 
it was a long time before he could be comforted. 

"Contrast this with what I saw yesterday (27 March, '87). 
A fiendish woman came out of a public-house and bent down 
with horrid abuse over what I at first supposed to be a dog, 
but what proved to be her own child (about Oliver's age) 
whom she had left outside. My heart ached for the poor 



298 R. H. Quick 

child, but when the mother plunged again into the public, I 
observed that the child had not been much affected by this 
outburst of brutality, but looked stolidly contented. I sup- 
pose the cuticle of the mind, like that of the body, soon 
ceases to be sensitive if exposed to harsh treatment." 

Children in the Old Testament 

"There is very little, as far as I have observed, about 
children in the Old Testament, but in Zechariah viii. 5, in 
a prophecy of the prosperity of Jerusalem, he mentions not 
only the old, but goes on, 'And the streets of the city shall 
be full of boys and girls playing in the streets thereof.' There 
is no prettier sight to my eye than streets full of children, a 
sight I have often enjoyed on fine summer mornings in old 
German and Swiss towns between 6.30 and the school-hour 7. 
I remember that Halle used at this time in the morning to 
seem a city of children." 

A precocious boy 

"Nov. 4, '77. On Friday evening I went down to Cater- 
ham and heard a debate of the ' Historical Society ' at Lake's 
preparatory school. The subject was ' Should England have 
avoided the wars with France subsequent to 1688?' Lake 
confined himself to the Lewis XIV. wars, which were ac- 
cording to him a mistake and came of Dutch Bill, who was 
not a national king. Lake's speech was much too long. His 
assistant's, who followed on the other side, was in manner 
detestably bad, and he punished his hearers considerably, 
though he talked some sense. A dissenting minister spoke 
with a much better manner than any of us, but without a 
grain of sense. Then came the event of the evening. I had 
observed a small boy with bright eyes who had been fussing 
about and taking notes. This child, who looked about nine, 



Child Nature 299 

though I believe he is over ten, then got up and made a 
most effective reply to Lake. Some of his arguments were 
excellent : e.g. Lake had said that Lewis XIV. 's power would 
not have lasted long. Mactaggart replied that a simoom does 
not last long, but this would be a poor reason for not averting 
it if possible. Altogether the child showed a most remarkable 
critical power. About the most precocious thing I heard from 
him was his answer to the question ' Which side do you take 
in the Eastern war ? ' a question I put to him on the way to 
town next morning (he was coming up for an exeat). He said, 
1 Really it is such a very large question that I cannot form an 
opinion about it.' " 

On a schoolboy's diary (confiscated at CranleigJi) x 

" I wish we could understand and sympathise with boys' 
feelings and hopes and fears. It is so difficult to get at them. 
We should not like to live with grown people who habitually 
concealed from us all that they thought and felt, and yet we 
have to live on these terms with boys, and because we are 
conscious of knowing and being able to do so much more 
than they, we hardly give them credit for knowing or feeling 
anything." 

Intensity of Child Life 

" One thing grown-up people fail to realise about boy life, 
especially children's life, and that is the intensity of it. We 
ourselves get so phlegmatic. With us nothing very much 
matters. But with the young everything matters, and that 
intensely. So there is a strong life of hopes, fears, likes and 
dislikes, friendships and quarrels going on, which the master 
little suspects." 

1 The diary is transcribed in full, but is hardly worth quoting. 



300 R. H. Quick 



The Child's Mind 

"The child-mind is a delightful thing in the ideal, but 
practically it is a nuisance. It goes on wondering who is the 
biggest man in the world, &c. &c. It never seems to have 
any grist to grind, and goes on turning and turning as if in 
a hurricane, and no sense results." 

Boys in combination 

" Assemblies of boys are like elements in chemical combi- 
nation. The mixture has properties which are totally absent 
from the component parts when asunder. A and B may be 
quiet, gentlemanlike boys when apart, and yet together they 
may be a pair of unruly, unmannerly little cads." 

Child Nature 

"22. 3. 87. The life of children, how little we under- 
stand it ! Except the cord of love, there seems little to unite 
us with them. Our aims are so different, our estimates so 
different, our interests so different ! One of the child's main 
objects in life seems to be imposing its own will on those about 
it, and this will which the child is always contending for is 
the merest caprice, and formed no grown-up person can say 
why. Without experience one could hardly believe what a 
constant warfare the child wages in getting its own way. That 
the way of the grown-up person may conceivably be better 
never comes into the child's head. The child feels the grown 
person to be stronger, and it learns to submit without the 
least show of resistance, just as we submit to the weather. 
But the judicious, loving elder does not like to be always 
opposing, and is afraid of crushing the child's free action, 
so we naturally let the child have its way wherever we can. 



Child Nature 301 

Then we come to a point where the child's will would cause 
great inconvenience, perhaps risks that cannot be faced. 
Then comes the tug. If the child is not coaxed to attend 
to something else, it sets up a howl and makes itself almost 
intolerable. 

" Our children have never gained anything in this way, 
and they mostly understand when they have pushed their 
own will as far as they will be allowed, but at times they 
turn 'naughty,' and the childish 'I shan't!' has to be met 
by force majeure ." 

A school anecdote 

" 12 June, '87. B. Tower told me the following. He 
hates boys eating in school, and has a regular punishment 
for that offence. For a long time he had had no case of it, 
when one day a boy just in front of him worked his jaws 
in a way that seemed unmistakable. ' You are eating,' said 
Tower. The boy did not deny it. ' Bring me what you 
are eating.' The boy produced from his pocket an old- 
looking slab of cocoa-nut ice. Tower was angry and pitched 
in pretty hot, at the same time setting the regulation punish- 
ment. After school the boy came to him privately and said, 
1 1 wasn't eating, Sir.' ' I saw you,' said Tower. ' No, Sir, I 
was getting my teeth right. I have false teeth.' And Tower 
found that the boy had confessed to eating and taken his 
punishment rather than confess to the form that he had 
false teeth." 

Children and Mothers 

" 10. 1. 89. A healthy child has boundless activities both 
of brain and limb. To the adult these activities seem energy 
wasted, to be let alone or positively repressed as resulting in 
mischief. The mother alone seems provided with an instinct 
which enables her to understand and direct the energies of 



302 R. H. Quick 

her offspring. The sober old cat is not irritated by the rest- 
lessness of her kittens, and even condescends to romp with 
them at the expense of her own dignity; but when the 
kitten upsets the milk-jug the cook goes for her with the 
broom. It is disastrous that in ' society ' the mother has 
little to do with the children. How can the wretched nurse- 
maid, whom I pity from the ground of my heart, supply her 
place ? In school children are kept quiet, and this is probably 
the very worst thing that could happen to them." 



Dora 303 

DORA AND OLIVER 

A Study of Child Life 

The following chapter includes, with a few unimportant 
omissions and condensations, the life history of two children 
from their birth to their seventh and fourth years respectively, 
as set down day by day in the Note Books. It hardly needs 
preface or comment. It makes, indeed, no pretence to scien- 
tific accuracy, and cannot on this score take rank with the 
child-studies of Parez or Preyer. Quick had no knowledge 
of physiology or of psychology in its modern developments. 
On the other hand, it has an almost unique interest as the 
study of a close observer and original teacher on his own 
children, to whom he was able to devote a large portion 
of his time, and on whom he tested his own educational 
theories. We cannot but regret that his observations on 
Oliver are not set down with the same minuteness and regu- 
larity as those on Dora, so that in the record (what was any- 
thing but the case in real life) the boy seems but a foil to 
the girl. 

" 7 Feb. '83. Before making another entry in this book, 
I wish to record my feeling of gratitude to our Heavenly 
Father that He has suffered me to have my own child in 
my arms. My little daughter is in the sixth day of her sepa- 
rate existence — individual existence I should say. May God 
preserve her." 

" 30 April, '83. Theodora is now 12J weeks old. Already 
she begins to take notice, and has done so for three weeks 
at least. At first the child can do nothing but cry, and 
seems to have to learn even how to get its mother's milk. 
It gives no sign that it uses its eyes. Dora first seemed to 
hear, for she very soon started at any sudden noise. At 
about one month she began to start at the light. She now 



304 R> H. Quick 

makes pretty, cooing sounds when she is happy, and she 
laughs [ ?] . Some sort of connection of ideas is already estab- 
lished in her mind, for she leaves off crying when she turns 
to her mother's breast, and does not wait to touch it. She 
has a great aversion to dressing or undressing, though she 
likes her bath. She knows what is going to happen, and 
directly a string is untied she begins to scream. What sur- 
prises me is the time she will give her attention to any object 
that pleases her. I have held up a handkerchief or a bracelet 
and danced it about where she could see it, and she has fixed 
her eyes on the object and kept them fixed for five or ten 
minutes. That she looks at the thing and is occupied with it 
is certain, for when I move it she follows it with her eyes. 
She now understands following with the eyes, but not moving 
the head to increase her field of vision." 

" 1 May, '83. At three months she stared and laughed at 
a bracelet for over a quarter of an hour, in fact till I was too 
tired to hold it up any longer. She is now getting to turn her 
head so as to keep the object in sight." 

" 19 May, '83. At 31 months I am struck with the vast 
amount of exercise she takes. She will keep hard at work for 
nearly or quite an hour throwing about her arms and kicking 
out first one leg, then the other, at the same time that her 
arms are at work." 

"23 July, '83. Dora is within a week of six months. She 
has learnt to play, and at times in playing she laughs heartily. 
I observe that now and then she discovers she can do some- 
thing new, and the discovery seems to please her and she 
practises it a good deal, e.g. she learnt a process of pro- 
longed spitting with a bubbling noise, but when she had 
practised it for a few days she seemed to forget it again. 
The same with a prolonged e . . . r in her throat. It is odd 
to find accomplishments gained and lost again at so early 
an age. 

" It is strange, too, that at so early an age she seems to 



Dora 305 

have fits of violent passion. When her mother tries to put 
her to sleep at night she sometimes begins to thrust her fists 
into her eyes, then throw herself about violently, and then 
take to screaming, and this she carries on for an hour or so 
till tired out." 

" 24 Nov. '83. I wish I had taken more notes about 
Dora. It would be interesting to observe how soon a child 
shows righthandedness. Dora is now just ten months old 
and her righthandedness is as complete as ours. She lets a 
ball fall to see it roll along the floor, and if it is put in her 
left hand she always transfers it to the right before she lets 
it fall again. 

"The chief facts I have observed are her interest in 
hearing; she does anything she can to get sound; next her 
constant examination of everything by touch, and the con- 
stant occupation of her hands. The sight is not the prin- 
cipal sense. Next her interest in animals and her delight in 
seeing the cows. 

"When about five months old she thought it a great joke 
to put out her tongue and wet her mother's cheek, and when 
she had done it she laughed a roguish little laugh that was 
like a burst of sunshine. But by degrees she ceased to laugh, 
and then would not perform the trick at all." 

"27 Dec. '83. Dora at eleven months. She gets on by 
such imperceptible advances that I chronicle little and yet the 
progress lately has been great. For the last month or so she 
has looked for sympathy from those with her. It is a grand 
step when the child, on seeing anything that greatly pleases 
it, turns its head to look into mother's or father's face and see 
if she or he is looking and enjoying the sight too. 

" The growth of the conscience too is a most interesting 
study. Some animals, dogs at least, become very consci- 
entious, and a dog knows directly when he has done wrong. 
But I do not think that the dog ever tries to assert its will, 
or ever gets angry when its will is thwarted, as the child 
x 



306 R. H. Quick 

does. Dora, from about the age of ten months, has not 
only shown a desire at times to clutch at the table-cloth 
and pull it, but in doing this she looks up at us with a 
mischievous smile that shows she knows she should not. 
We say ' No, no ! ' seriously, and sometimes she gives up 
the attempt, but at other times she perseveres, and then 
when she is taken from the table she frowns and kicks 
and screams malevolently. There is a distinctly human 
element in this." 

"27 April, '84. She is now nearly fifteen months old, and 
for the last ten days has walked alone. The eye has now 
become the leading sense, though a little while ago she cared 
more for sound than sight. Still she is much pleased with 
sound, and dances and sings to herself when I play the fiddle 
to her. She has become very sharp in recognising things in 
pictures. She knows the picture of a 'quack-quack,' and 
when a new picture was shown her with very small geese in 
the background, she spotted them directly. When awake 
she is never at rest, and she is ever handling things and 
naming them. Fur is a great delight to her, and she cries 
' Poo ! Poo ! ' (puss) directly she catches sight of anything 
furry. She is very proud of any new garment, and calls our 
attention to it. She has a great notion of attracting strangers, 
especially men. Her temper is at times violent, and reproof 
makes her angry but never penitent. She is, I think, less of 
a romp than she was. Her talking is backward, and she 
begins words only ; ' Br ' stands for ' brush,' ' bitten,' and 
anything that begins with a b." 

"22 May, '84. To-day I, for the first time, heard Dora 
(fifteen months old on the first of this month) make a sen- 
tence. Her mother went indoors from the garden. Dora 
called after her and then ran to where she had been.' Not 
finding her, Dora said, ' Mammy tata,' evidently meaning 
' Mammy's gone.' 

" One of the most interesting of phenomena is the ap- 



Dora 307 

pearance of what theologians call ' sin,' a thing for which the 
philosophers, as far as I know, have not been able to hit on 
a name. Dora is now nearly seventeen months. She is, of 
course, always wanting to go here and go there, and to grasp 
and handle everything within reach. The question arises 
how far is she to have the free play of her own will? Either 
one must let her do everything she can do without mischief, 
or must thwart her at every turn, or one must subject her to 
one's own caprice. I think the first course best, and this we 
have adopted ; so she has her own way in everything except 
where mischief would ensue. To this necessary control she 
does not often object, but at times she resents it. More 
than this, she occasionally, though very rarely, does some- 
thing because she knows it is wrong to do it. In the dining- 
room we have hung the barometer so low that Dora can 
reach it. She has got into a habit of doing things which 
are forbidden, not from disobedience so much as from a 
sense of fun : she runs to the door and then sits down and 
laughs, waiting for us to carry her away from it. The other 
day she went to the barometer, which she knows she ought 
not to touch. At first she looked round roguishly, but when 
her mother told her not to touch, she seemed seized with a 
fit of wickedness ; she ceased to look funny, and turning to 
the barometer, she caught hold of it and shook it as vigor- 
ously as she could. When she was carried off she screamed 
violently. Here we have a case of disobedience to law just 
for disobedience' sake. 

" In her babyhood she was far more engaging and beauti- 
ful than I should have thought possible ; and, if it had rested 
with me, I doubt if I should have been able to persuade 
myself to let her grow older." 

" 28 July, '84. She is now near the end of her first year 
and a half. It is wonderful how many phases of life are 
passed through in the first eighteen months. Habits have 
been learned and unlearned, tastes have shown themselves 



308 R. H. Qtiick 

and vanished, things which for a time excited intense in- 
terest have been forgotten : e.g. a picture (a very poor one) 
of a canal at the top of an almanack-sheet that hangs in 
my study was an immense favourite with Dora. She began 
shouting ' Daddah, Daddah ! ' [7vhy we never knew) and 
going for it directly she came near the study. Then she 
went for a visit to Brighton, and on coming back in five 
weeks she had totally forgotten it. She did not notice it 
when brought to the study, and she stared at it without 
seeming recognition or the slightest interest when it was 
held up to her. Some months ago her fondness for pic- 
tures, especially some pictures, was intense, but it seems 
much less now she knows the objects they represent. Calde- 
cott's ' Frog he would a wooing go ' was a great delight 
of hers, and she went through a regular pantomime, 
bowing, knocking, dancing, crying, in connection with it. 
The book having come to pieces, her mother has pasted 
most of the pictures in an album, but in this form Dora 
does not care for them. Uncoloured pictures were quite 
as attractive to her as coloured, which was contrary to my 
expectation. 

" Another thing surprises me in so young a child : she 
seems to delight in little jokes. One standing joke of hers 
was to call a certain dog in one of her picture-books * Poo ' 
(puss) just in order to be put right. Just at present she is 
fond of pretending to do all sorts of things that have been 
forbidden. She has at times a violent temper, and throws 
away passionately anything she has hurt herself with. 

" The only pictures Dora delights in now are the photo- 
graphs of ' Gogo ' as she calls herself. 

" What a lot of observation has been given to bees ! how 
very little to children! At present we leave the most difficult 
problems to be settled exclusively by nurses or even by young 
nursemaids. 

"The first thing the child develops is the will. The 



Dora 309 

ordinary manifestation of the will is the desire to get this 
or that. What would be the effect, I wonder, if the child 
were systematically denied what it wanted ? The result could 
hardly be good for this reason, if no other : the child requires 
an atmosphere of love ; this denying system would hardly be 
possible if love to the child existed, and it would be quite im- 
possible if love to the child were to be shown. But the child 
must soon learn that his will is not all-powerful. He will 
ask for some things that could not, and for many things that 
should not, be given. The ordinary plan in these cases is to 
divert the child's attention, and as the attention at that age 
is inconstant, this is pretty easily dofre. When no deception 
is practised I see no objection to this, but the humouring of 
the child will not always do, and he must learn that if he 
has been refused, the thing is quite out of his reach. My 
little pet has learnt this lesson, and there is seldom any dis- 
satisfaction shown when she is refused anything. A greater 
difficulty arises when the will of the child simply stands on 
the defensive. We have been very careful not to create many 
?nala prohibita. It is better to suffer some small inconven- 
iences by letting children do slight mischief so long as they 
can do it with a good conscience. But Dora has been told 
not to put stones on the grass. She took a fancy for filling 
her hands with small stones and strewing them on the lawn. 
This was at once forbidden. Now whenever she feels naughty 
she pioks up stones and throws them. She is then ordered 
to take them off and she won't. We take her hand and 
close it over the stone and so remove it, but this is not 
exactly obedience in the child, and how to exact obedience 
I don't know. 

"Again, she will take it into her head not to say good- 
night : when asked she turns away her head and says, ' No ! 
No ! ' Here we seem quite powerless. I suppose we shall 
have to make her feel that we are displeased. 

"On the intellectual side I have observed from a very 



310 R. H. Quick 

early stage memory resulting from association. After taking 
the newspaper to my brother in his bedroom for a morning 
or two, she began to clamour ' Uncle Hed (Fred) paper ! ' 
directly she was brought to our room, and she continued 
for some days after Fred had left us. She was very easily 
taught to blow on a watch to open it, and this sequence 
she has never forgotten, and she still believes in it, though 
she has seen watches opened without blowing. I observe 
that she confuses between things somewhat alike : e.g. she 
puts a coiled-up measuring tape to her ear, expecting it to 
tick like a watch, and she called a grey india-rubber ball 

" In language I have made some curious observations. 
For some time after she said ' cook ' quite plainly she would 
not go on to ' book.' When told to say it she said ' boop.' 
Her tongue now is getting nimble, and she will try to say any 
word, even ' coryopsis,' but the sounds she uses with meaning 
are few. Her power of audition is far beyond her power of 
speech." 

"27 Sept. '84. Dora is just on nineteen months old. She 
is beginning to show great retentiveness. To-day she heard 
someone in the bath-room and said 'Auntie Meemee' (Emily). 
Emily left us four days ago, so her mother said, ' No ! Auntie 
Meemee gone with geegees. Who went with geegees?' On 
which Dora said, 'Auntie Meemee, Granny, Uncle Bill,' and 
then after a pause, 'Uncle Fed.' This was really a feat of 
memory, for Fred left us four weeks ago." 

" 30 Sept. '84. It is very interesting to observe how soon 
children learn to understand the conventional representation of 
objects or pictures. I have always thought that most pictures 
in children's books were too small and too conventional, but 
to-day Dora (just 20 months old) took a postcard and called 
out ' Geegee ! geegee ! ' At first we could not think what 
she meant, but we found she was looking at the tiny unicorn 
in the royal arms." 



Dora 3 1 1 

"21 Oct. '84. She is now 21 months and has lately 
entered on the dramatic stage of existence. She plays at 
giving dolly bread and milk and making a mess in feeding 
her. It is very amusing to see her put the spoon to dolly's 
mouth and take it away again saying, ' Too hot.' " 

" 10 Nov. '84. The language of signs comes before the 
language of speech. To-day Dora saw me out-of-doors without 
my hat. She was at the window upstairs ready to go out. She 
put her hand to her own hat to protest, just as a grown person 
might have done. 

" When she draws (scribbling is a great amusement of hers 
just now) she calls the pencil a pen and puts an empty bowl 
for ink and dips the pencil in. 

"To-day she began drawing in a book and when her 
mother told her not to, she scribbled as fast as she could, 
knowing she would be stopped directly. When put out she 
throws things about with violence. 

" She is learning the nursery rhymes fast, and a day or 
two ago said, 'Who goes there? a grenadier' all through by 
herself." 

"17 Nov. '84. My dear little daughter spends a great part 
of her life in make-believes. This morning she got a new 
paint-brush and an empty bowl. Then she went to work 
calling out, ' Gogo paint.' Dipping her brush into the bowl 
she proceeded to paint the furniture. Then she came to me 
and said, ' Dada paint ! ' so I had to take the brush and paint 
a chair for her. We were both quite innocently and happily 
employed. But if instead of make-believes Dora had got hold 
of some real paint she would indeed have got into the world 
of fact, but the result would have been disastrous. So I suppose 
that even Carlyle would leave to children their world of make- 
believes. No doubt the facts of life are infinitely beautiful and 
interesting if we can understand them, but we can't, and if we 
have no material for thought but just what we understand and 
see into, we may in the end only be puzzled and bored, just as 



312 R, H. Qttick 

Dora would be, if we set ourselves against her make-believes. 
This sounds a highly dangerous Welt-ansicht and seems to 
smack of the philosophy which Maurice (rightly or wrongly 
I know not) attributed to Mansel, a philosophy which makes 
God play with us at make-believes, just as we play with our 
children. But I suppose we must admit that in the small 
amount of thought that goes on in our brains we do for the 
most part play at make-believes, or at least take most things 
at their conventional value without sturdily examining for 
ourselves." 

"24 Nov. '84. In a general way Dora (now nearly 22 
months old) is very good and fairly obedient, but at times she 
has freaks of naughtiness. She has been told repeatedly not 
to put her hand in the water-jug, but yesterday in a fit of 
naughtiness, quite unprovoked, she ran across the room and 
plunged her hand and arm as far as she could into the water. 
When rebuked she roared, but was not at all penitent. She 
was rather pleased at hearing her Aunt told that she was a 
naughty girl, and she repeated it triumphantly. She tried to 
scratch her mother and then threw herself on the floor ; from 
which she looked up and laughed. The fit does not last long, 
but while it is on her she seems capable of any mischief." 

" 26 Nov. '84. I wonder at what age dreaming begins. 
Dora dreamt last night of a big dog and was frightened by its 
barking. She cried out in her sleep, ' Dog not bark ! ' and this 
morning when I asked her she remembered and said, ' Dog 
bow-wow.' " 

"3 Dec. '84. Dora has now at the age of 22 months 
reached the stage of inquiry. She keeps holding up this or 
that and saying, ' What dat ? ' Directly she wants knowledge 
not by Anschauung but by speech, difficulties begin. In some 
cases the answer must be a word, because nothing but a name 
or word is wanted, e.g. she sees in a picture-book a strange 
animal ; she knows it is an animal and all she wants is a name 
to differentiate it. You say ' goat ' and the answer is quite 



Dora 3 1 3 

satisfactory. But very often it is not a word but a mental 
conception that the child is asking for. What's to be done 
then? She takes up a thermometer and asks, 'What's that?' 
If you say ' a thermometer ' you are only (as the French say) 
paying the child with words. Rousseau denounces the practice 
not without reason. Yet, as in learning nursery rhymes, words 
must often precede the knowledge of things." 

"18 Dec. '84. Her fondness for babies is very remarkable. 
In the photograph book she always* stops at a baby. She has 
a little crockery-ware baby which is a special pet. She was 
delighted when I played at being ' a big baby with a beard ' 
and went to sleep on the floor. She came and kissed me 
spontaneously, and this she never does when I am in my own 
person. It is odd how strongly maternal instincts show them- 
selves in a child less than two years old. When her aunt takes 
a shawl and wraps it round one of her own arms, showing her 
fist as a baby's head, Dora rocks it and kisses it with the zeal of 
an affectionate nurse. 

" She already knows tunes apart when I play on the 
violin." 

"21 Jan. '85. The first tune she has sung so that we 
could clearly recognise it is ' John Peil.' She can also distin- 
guish without danger of mistake ' Poor Cock Robin,' 'Froggie 
would a wooing go,' and ' Daddy Neptune.' It is a lovely 
sight when she dances to my fiddle, holding out her frock on 
both sides. 

" One should be very careful not to frighten children, but 
it is difficult to avoid it. The other day Hallam made a noise 
like a fowl and Dora was frightened. We reassured her, but it 
was an hour or two before she forgot it. She kept on saying 
as if for her own relief, ■ Only Mr. Hallam making a noise.' " 

" 2 Feb. '85. Dora was two years old yesterday. She has 
just been in the room with me for an hour. The chief thing 
that strikes me is the incessant activity of the child. She is 
never still for a moment." 



314 R. H. Quick 

"11 Feb. '85. Apparently children do not think much of 
cause and effect, but sequence of ideas by association is very 
strong from the first. I once took out my false teeth when I 
was holding Dora on the window sill to open and shut the 
shutters. Whenever she is standing there she asks me to show 
her my teeth, though never at any other time. 

" I observe a strongly developed notion of her own dignity 
already. She has fairly learned that she must obey an edict of 
mine or her mother's, but she disguises her submission as far 
as possible. If she has something in her hand she has no 
business with and I say ' Give it me,' instead of giving it she 
puts it down as far away from me as possible. Rightly or 
wrongly I acquiesce in this modified obedience." 

"3 March, '85. She can now count properly up to three, 
and is nearly always right when I ask her, ' How many spots? ' 
with the one, two, and three dominoes. My notion is not to 
let her know at present any number above three and to say for 
any higher number ' lots of spots.' It might no doubt be 
argued that according to the order of nature we advance to 
accurate knowledge through inaccurate, and that accuracy in 
the earlier stages is impossible, however such limits may be 
attempted by the elder intelligence. Even with my limit of 
three Dora is not quite certain. I should like to try some 
number cards for children on which the spots or objects taken 
as units should be arranged in every possible order. This of 
course is pretty much Grubeism." 

" 10 March, '85. Her temptations to naughtiness do not 
seem to come very often. The other day when I would not 
get into the cradle as she wished she took my hand and tried 
to scratch it. When she has done wrong she does not seem 
sorry, but much interested by her performance, and rather 
inclined to boast of it. We looked grave and told her she was 
not a good girl, but she only kept on saying half to herself, 
' Cratch dadda's hand ! '" 

"13 March, '85. People seldom understand that if a 



Dora 315 

whole class of persons fall into a particular fault there must 
be something in the circumstances to make that fault all but 
inevitable. We observe nurses humbugging children and think 
how foolish they are ; but perhaps if we had to take constant 
care of children we might give way to temptation ourselves. 
To-day I had Dora out with me and I found how very difficult 
it was to get her along. There being in her no will to get on 
and no habit, everything that caught her eye in the hedge or 
road brought about a stoppage, and when she started again she 
was as likely to go one way as another. In these circumstances 
the ordinary nurse naturally thinks only how her immediate 
end is to be gained and does not treat the child like a sane 
person. Thus the child soon finds out that what it is told is 
often not true, and when its elders use words for deceit, it 
follows suit." 

"3 June, '85. Dora is now 2 J years old, and this is the 
first spring she has observed wild flowers. I have just had a 
delightful little walk with her up the path from the Vicarage to 
the Union. Dora said in starting, ' Up steep hill, lot of pile- 
worts ! ' and we found she was right as we went up the path. 
These she knew quite well. But like all teachers I wanted to 
get on too fast. I showed her a buttercup, which of course 
she called a pilewort. I observe that though she is remarkably 
quick in observing similarities and in recognising the same 
thing with alterations, she has little power of observing differ- 
ences. The other day when Wadeson (ordained last Sunday) 
came back in clerical attire, I at first glance thought he was 
someone else, but Dora knew him without any hesitation. This 
morning when Mr Martin, the carpenter, came, whom she does 
not know, she saw his grey beard and said, ' Mr Punch ! ' as 
Punch has a similar beard, though no other point of re- 
semblance. 

" To go back to the walk and the flowers, I was surprised 
to find how many Dora knew — dandelion, violet, daisy, blue- 
bell — these she recognised besides the pilewort. In giving her 



316 R. H. Quick 

more flowers one was at once brought face to face with the 
great problem for the teacher — shall we carefully limit the area 
for impressions, allow very few and seek to make them accurate 
and permanent before passing on, or shall we do as Nature 
seems to do — give out a number of impressions and let them 
clear and classify themselves later on? My favourite plan is 
the first, but when a child asks, 'What's this? What's this?' it 
is hard to refuse the information asked for. I showed her too 
many flowers this morning, but I devoted myself especially to 
getting her to recognise the speedwell. She was much taken 
with the flower when I showed it her and asked the name. I 
told her, but she seemed to have a difficulty in remembering, 
and when I showed her other specimens, I had to ' wips ' — 
whisper or prompt. I gave her a stellaria, and the longer name 
seemed to strike her fancy. 

" Her memory sometimes surprises us. She sent a present 
of a little Japanese tortoise to the Lewis children seven months 
ago, and, though this had not been mentioned since, she spoke 
of it a day or two ago when she saw a similar tortoise." 

"27 June, '85. Dora in general is a very good child now, 
but she is disobedient at times, and her disobedience is often 
mere self-assertion. One thinks of the humility of children, and 
yet children often go wrong for want of humility. It seems to 
Dora infra dig. to do just what she is told, and she obeys with 
a difference. Sometimes she disobeys apparently for the simple 
pleasure of self-assertion. A few days back I told her not to 
touch my fiddle-strings near the bridge. I said she might touch 
them near the screws ; but she at once put her hand on the 
forbidden part. I spoke seriously to her and she looked 
frightened, and cried in such a piteous way, not loudly or 
angrily, that I was half inclined to cry too. How sad it is to 
come suddenly on the sterner realities of life and tremble at 
the abysses that seem to open before us ! I do trust it will 
please God to make me a refuge for my darling when the 
abysses yawn, not the enchanter who opens them. It is 



Dora 317 

wonderful how the least suspicion of harshness in the tone 
is felt by Dora. I can't bear to speak of my dear little girl as 
wanting in anything lovable, for any being more intensely 
lovable it is hard to conceive in human form, but at times she 
asserts herself, as I have mentioned. 

" Already she has a great notion of putting away childish 
things — ' Dora does not say " thanky," Dora says " thank you." ' 
Anything she thinks an advance, as ' father,' for ' dad,' she 
adopts directly. I am glad to find how fond she is of doing 
everything all by herself. She won't have help unless her own 
powers entirely fail. 

" One sees even at this early age the rudiments of some 
intellectual failings that trouble most people. She had been 
looking at a picture of an undergraduate in an old book and 
spoke of it as a girl. I hadn't examined it, so I said, ' Dad 
thinks it's a boy.' She after a pause, ' Dora thinks it's a girl.' 
I looked at it and said, ' No, dear, Dad knows it's a boy.' 
' Dora knows it's a girl,' was the prompt reply. The tendency 
to resist any disturbance of error as an interference with the 
right of property is very wide spread. Again, the mere 
possession of a name is often taken for an explanation — a very 
common form of what the French call paying ourselves with 
words. There was a little pocket-compass on the table : ' What's 
this? ' asked Dora. 'A compass, dear,' said I, and she seemed 
quite satisfied and kept repeating, ' It's a compass ! ' " 

" 10 July, '85. The conception of number advances very 
slowly, and though Dora (now 2^- years old) can count cor- 
rectly up to six, yet I don't think she has any clear con- 
ception of any number beyond two. To-day I held up 3 
fingers and asked ' How many ? ' She at once began to count 
them '.i, 2, 3,' then counted one a second time and said '4 
fingers.' " 

"5 Sept. '85. Dora (two years and seven months) is just 
arrived at the age of asking questions. Yesterday she asked 
the housemaid, who was cleaning the grate, 'Where do ases 



318 R. H. Quick 

(ashes) come from?' To-day she asked her mother the more 
puzzling question, ' Mother, where do babies come from?' 

"She is wonderfully observant. She tries experiments to 
see what will be allowed. The other day she called with her 
mother at the C's. She was very careful to say ' Please ' and 
1 Thank you.' When she came away she said to her mother, 
Dora said ' Please' and ' Thank you,' but Dora says to father 
' Dora wants more.' This she said quite in a different tone. 
I suppose she had tried experiments on me and found I had 
not resented it." 

" 1 6 Sept. '85. Dora is not yet 2 years 8 months old. 
This seems young for a child to have an eye for the beauties 
of nature but Dora not only delights in flowers, but . yesterday 
evening she became quite excited about the ' lubly colours,' as 
she said, in the sunset sky." 

"13 Oct. '85. Dora's intonation has from the first as- 
tonished and delighted us. It has not come of imitation, 
for she has always spoken with much more emphasis than any 
one about her. But her play of voice and the admirable way 
in which she conveys her meaning and feeling by stress on par- 
ticular words might well be envied by the greatest elocutionists. 

" Another thing I have observed. Although the play of 
voice is so great, she at times sings what she wants to say, 
often to a known melody, sometimes to simple recitative that 
she invented for herself. Her memory for poetry is good, and 
she thoroughly enters into the meaning of what she says. Her 
rendering of 

" Dear mother, said a little fish, 
Pray is not that a fly ? " 

is admirable. 

" A strange mark of her acuteness is that she knows when 
she does not understand. She was told to-day that nurse 
would not be back for an hour. 'What's an hour?' asked 
Dora. 'The time between 1 o'clock and 2 o'clock,' said her 



Dora 319 

mother. 'You see that's what I don't understand yet,' said 
Dora. 

" She has a great notion of adapting words and parodying. 
She knows ' Pop goes the weasel,' and when nurse talked 
to-day of popping the jersey over her head, Dora said, ' Pop 
goes the jersey.' I should not have expected this wit at 2 
years 8 months." 

" 1 Nov. '85. Her taste for the beauties of nature still 
shows itself. Though only 2 years and 9 months she said to 
me to-day like a grown-up person, 'See how pretty the top 
of Winder [our hill] is getting.' The evening sun was just 
catching the snow on the top." 

" 14 Nov. '85. Dora has a bad cold. 'My cold is getting 
worse as worse,' she said to-day. She is very soft-hearted. 
In showing her Caldecotts ' Froggy would a-wooing go ' her 
mother made Mrs Froggy say, ' Oh don't go away.' This is 
now too much for Dora, whose eyes fill with tears and she says, 
' But he will come back again,' and her mother has now to 
vary the legend and suppress the lily white duck." 

" 29 Nov. '85. Dora's perception of a joke was remark- 
able at a very early age. Yesterday she called out to me, 
' Father, bring me my spoon ! ' Her mother said, ' Dora, you 
forgot something.' ' Yes,' said Dora. ' What was it? ' said her 
mother. We both expected ' Please,' as Dora well knew, but 
she determined to give us what we did not expect. 'What 
is it?' repeated her mother. 'Hurry up!' said Dora." 

"5 Dec. '85. The greater part of the day Dora is as 
good as gold, but she still has her naughty fits, generally when 
she is tired. A night or two ago her mother, who had Oliver 
asleep in her arms, asked Dora who was by the door to open 
it. Dora hesitated ; a struggle was going on whether she 
should obey or not. The Ahriman in her prevailed ; she put 
her left hand with a toy in it to the handle and said she could 
not. Still refusing she was taken upstairs screaming frantically 



320 R. H. Quick 

with rage. Presently I brought her back to the drawing-room. 
Her mother told her to dry her eyes and offered her a pocket- 
handkerchief. Dora refused and demanded her own hand- 
kerchief. Exit a second time screaming. 

" Since the above incident Dora has always been most 
anxious to open the door for her mother and runs to it if she 
thinks her mother wants it opened. This is a very sweet sign 
of penitence. The day after the incident Dora said, ' Sing 
[tell a story] about Dora not opening the door.' Her moth r 
said. ' No, we don't sing about that : Dora was not a good girl.' 
Dora did not recur to the subject." 

"9 Dec. '85. Her sense of fun is very delightful. To- 
day she pretended to be ' Mr Cockadoo,' and as she knew 
we should pretend to be shocked she bawled out in a big 
voice, 'This is a jolly field!' and then 'This is a stunning 
field ! ' and when we said, ' That's shocking, Mr Cockadoo,' 
she shrieked with laughter." 

"15 Jan. '86. What a freshness there is about a child's 
use of language. 'Unbedient' for 'disobedient,' 'dentister' 
for ' dentist,' are recent creations of Dora's. One of her phrases 
has quite an American twang. On getting a good help of 
pudding at dinner she exclaimed, ' What an all-mankind lot ! ' 
It evidently came from ' While shepherds watched ' &c, the 
carol with which she has been much taken this last Xmas." 

"29 Jan. ""&(>. We have had our first serious trouble with 
Dora, she has had fits of temper lately, but with admirable 
tact and patience her mother has always brought the child to 
do what was required. To-day however she was disobedient 
and persistently sulked. Finally her mother carried her into 
the nursery and whipped her. The child was a little frightened, 
but not the least penitent. She at length did what she had 
been bid (to carry a ring to the nursery) but howled all the 
way. It was clear that such a collision would come. Hitherto 
Dora has not understood that her parents' will must prevail." 



Dora 321 



Dora at 3 yrs. 2 m. 

" 6 April, '86. She is singularly intelligent for her age. 
She remembers names very readily and picks up new words 
with ease. She is very anxious to get at the meaning of words 
and asks about them. 

" As to numbers, though she can count up to 10, she is not 
sure of any number of things beyond 3. She has not for a 
long time played at the hiding game, and I thought she had 
outgrown it, but to-day she said to her' mother, 'I'll hide in 
Bradley's room and you say, 'Where is my little girl gone to? ' 
and look everywhere for me : ' and when I played the game with 
her she told me all the rooms I was to look in before I found 
her. She has been romping away, first as ' Organ boy,' and 
then as ' Oliver,' and such happiness communicates itself and 
gives the greatest pleasure I know of. I cannot believe that all 
this beauty and joy will vanish like a lovely sunset and leave 
no trace and no result. There must be some result of good, 
or some good in the end greater still. 

" It is hard to understand many movements of the childish 
mind. Why does it delight in exact repetition, even including 
the accidentals? Yesterday I crossed my legs and jumped 
Dora on one of my feet, taking her hands in mine. I happened 
to have a letter in one hand, so I put it into my mouth to hold. 
Soon after I gave Dora a second ride. When she got on my 
foot she said, ' Put the letter in your mouth.' " 

" 30 April, '86. Dora is generally a very good child, but 
when she does anything which she knows to be wrong she is 
afterwards rather proud of it than repentant. More than this, 
she at times tries to make out that she has done bad things 
which she would not do. The other day in throwing about 
her skipping-rope she hit her mother on the head with the 
handle and hurt her. The child was playing in perfect good 



322 R. H. Quick 

temper and the blow was the purest accident ; but directly it 
had happened an evil spirit seemed to seize Dora. Her face 
instead of showing concern grew defiant, and when her mother 
said, ' I knew my little girl did not mean to hurt me,' Dora 
said, ' Yes, I did ! ' quite fiercely." 

Dora at 3! 

"17 May, '86. She often shows a singular power of obser- 
vation and memory. The day before yesterday we showed her 
a cuckoo-plant flower. To-day in the fields she said, ' Here's 
another cuckoo.' I asked her why she thought so and she 
said, ' It's the leaf.' There was no flower of any kind. This 
was singular, as grown people do not often observe the 
leaves." 

" 1 June, '86. This too was 'cute for a child of 3^. At 
dinner her mother asked me whether I would have some ' tap.' 
Dora asked why she said ' tap.' ' Because it's too much trouble 
to say tapioca.' Directly after Dora turned to me, ' Will you 
have some ere' ? It's too much trouble to say ' cream.' " 

"11 May, '86. Oliver is now nearly 11 months old. He 
is getting very intelligent. For some time (nearly three months 
back) he used to lie agaze at his own hand, close his fist, 
open it, and turn his fingers about, with keen interest. Now 
he shows signs of intending to do more than he knows how to 
do. He takes a ball, e.g., and tries to push or throw it to his 
mother or me, and will even turn from one of us to try and get 
it to the other. He imitates vowel sounds and intervals, but 
except ' Dad ' (without meaning) he does not attempt con- 
sonants." 

Oliver at one year 

" 2 June, '86. It is delightful to see how early the generous 
instincts show themselves. Oliver is now in his 12th month 



Dora and Oliver 323 

and for some time he has tried to share his pleasures with us. 
If he likes the taste of anything he at once holds it out by 
turns to his mother and me that we may have the benefit of it 
too." 



Dora and Oliver 

"15 June, '86. Dora is now beginning to perplex herself 
with the great problems of existence. She asks her mother how 
the baa-lambs like having their legs cut off. Her mother says 
they are dead and don't feel. ' Shall we die ? ' asks Dora. ' Yes, 
some day.' Dora, ' But I suppose the great God will make us 
walk about again ? Will He make the baa-lambs walk about 
again?' " 

"17 June, '86. Oliver now within 4 days of a year old. 
What restless activity there is in a child ! He sets himself 
little problems — e.g. he gets hold of a tin jug, pulls the lid 
off, and tries to put it on again, it falls off twenty times 
but still he perseveres, and at last it stays. He then looks 
up and laughs triumphantly and expects us to join in his 
delight. Off comes the lid again and the process is repeated 
de novo. ■ 

" He is a great imitator and clever in the language of signs. 
To-day in the perambulator he took a fancy for pulling off my 
hat (a favourite trick of his), so he put his hand up to his own 
and then pointed to mine. He has a very strong will of his 
own and shows great tantrums when it is thwarted. His de- 
light in cows is very intense, and he sets off moo-ing directly 



he catches sight of them. 

" His mother to-day said he was a naughty boy, whereupon 
Dora came up and slapt him. When reproved she howled and 
was put out into the spare room roaring. Afterwards she said 
that when she was roaring she was sure the horse in the field 
watched her, he looked about so." 



324 R. H. Quick 



Dora's First Reading Lesson 



5 



"12 July, '86. A week ago I wrote on a slip of paper in 
large printing letters ' This is ' and on others ' Dora,' ' Father,' 
' Mother.' I showed them to Dora and she was soon able to 
recognise all but the first, and she is not yet quite sure about 
' This is.' By putting them together I make sentences for her 
to read 'This is Mother,' &c. I want to get a small stock of 
words thoroughly learnt in this way, and then to treat them 
analytically : e.g. If a child knows ' This ' and ' is ' one might 
cover up the Th of this or put Th before is" 

"26 July, '86. I find that words she is interested in she 
learns quickly and remembers well. She is quite on the spot 
with Dora — Quick — Barbara — Strawberry (names of cows) 
but this, is, a she does not remember." 

" 14 July, '86. We often think the metaphors of the 
'metaphysical' poets forced and wholly unnatural, but some 
of them are natural to children. The other day Dora said to 
her mother, ' The roses have had a bath and are all wet. The 
sun's their towel and is coming out to dry them.' This is 
quite in Cowley's style." 

" 2 Aug. '86. Dora made me laugh at dinner to-day by 
a funny muddle between the subjective and objective. She 
fixed her eyes on a lamp-hook in the ceiling and tried some 
optical experiments by shaking her head. Then she turned 
to me, 'Just see how that thing in the ceiling looks when I 
shake my head ! ' " 

" 4 Aug. '86. I have this morning given Dora a reading 
lesson. She was not much inclined for one, but I told her 
we had very often to do what we didn't want to do. ' Do you 
have to write letters when you don't want to?' asked Dora. 
But the lesson pleased her very well after all. 

" There is a vast advantage to the teacher in thus dealing 
with the problem ' in its lowest terms,' so to speak. 



Dora and Oliver 325 

" Dora now can recognise twelve words, but she is not very- 
certain of the forms : she fixes her attention on some peculiarity 
of, say the first letter. The M in * Mary ' got a little smudged, 
and Dora looks mainly at the smudge. But some words she 
knows, for when I wrote ' This is a cow,' she read it off 
straight. She is pleased when she makes out a sentence, and 
when she had made out ' Strawberry is a cow,' she said with 
great emphasis, ' And that is true. 1 " 

" 9 Aug. '86. One of the first characteristics we observe 
in young children is their delight in what they manage to do 
themselves, and next their desire to get others to share with 
them in their delight. 

"Oliver (between thirteen and fourteen months) is always 
doing something or other, and when this morning he surprised 
himself by his success in putting a lid on to a box he came 
and pulled his mother's dress and drew her attention to it, 
that she might see what he had done. The use of the hands 
comes long before the use of the tongue. Why is almost all 
instruction given to the tongue, or if to the hands, only as the 
servants of the tongue? 

" One of Oliver's great amusements is getting hold of a 
book and opening and shutting it. He likes pictures very 
well, but on the whole prefers opening and shutting the 
book." 

"it Aug. '86. I find the associations between the 
symbols of the words and the words themselves are found very 
slowly. Dora knows her 1 2 words very fairly after a month's 
acquaintance with them (never more than ten minutes a day), 
but still she is not quite safe. To-day when I gave her 
1 Strawberry ' by itself she read ' Cow/ just like the child 
in Disraeli's Vivian Grey, who insists that A-p-e spelt 
1 Monkey.' 

" Observing how slowly the ideas of form and sound are 
arbitrarily connected one gets a notion of the chief source of 
bad teaching. The grown-ups have got all these things 



326 R. H. Quick 

associated by years of constant use and they cannot under- 
stand, or at least realise, that there is no natural connection 
between them, and that the associations come very slowly 
even in the minds of clever children." 

" 24th Aug. '86. Just as in teaching children we see 
knowledge in its elements, so in observing them we see feelings 
acting without any of the cloaks which dissimulation provides 
for the feelings of grown-up people. 

" Dora when she hurt herself to-day rushed at me and 
slapped me, tho' she knew I had nothing to do with the hurt 
that had produced her bad temper. 

" Just now she wanted to look into the cupboard where I 
keep toys for schoolchildren, &c. I let. her look in on the 
distinct understanding that nothing was to be taken out. She 
could not resist asking, however, and was of course refused. 
This produced a short-lived ill-temper. It's expression was 
peculiar. She said, 'I don't like any of my things ; they are 
so ugly ! ' " 



Dora Teaching 

"11 Oct. '86. The chief thing that strikes me at present is 
that the simplest intellectual acts are performed at first with 
much difficulty and the habit which makes them automatic is 
very slowly acquired. 

" I have been some weeks at work with the five cubes I 
use to teach numbers, and by varying the play with them 
Dora's attention is kept up ; but the only thing she can do with 
certainty is to count them from one to five, and even here she 
sometimes goes wrong. To-day I got her to make two 
columns, one of three cubes and the other of two, but she had 
no notion how many cubes there were altogether. When I 
said Count ! she counted one, two, three, and then one, two, 
but 3 + 2 was quite beyond her. 



Doj-a and Oliver 327 

[I was talking the other day to a National School child of 
seven in Standard I, who had to ' write tables.' The process 
with her consisted in putting down a lot of figures in columns, 
and then some lines crossed anyhow and then = , but the 
symbols stood for nothing. She could not tell me how many 
12 and 1 made, and when I asked a lower number (5 and 1) 
she answered wrong. The marvel is, not that the children 
in elementary schools are bad in arithmetic, but that they 
ever learn anything at all. In the first stage they need 
good teaching and much individual attention and they get 
neither.] 

" To return to Dora. To-day she sat in a chair and I 
threw the cubes into her lap, she counting them as they came. 
Then she threw them one by one back, aad said each time 
how many were left, but she always counted them before she 
gave the number. I feel more and more that in the early 
stages teachers attempt too much. 

" To-day I tried a new plan which had the advantage of 
immensely interesting the child and may be a good means of 
teaching. I took five pennies and gave her five, and we 
played ' Eggs in the Bush.' Five was to be the greatest num- 
ber used. She will by this game soon learn differences up to 
five." 

"14 Oct. '86. She still cannot get a conception of num- 
ber beyond three. She said to-day about four, ' I cannot 
make it on my mind. Can you make it on your mind ? ' " 



Dora's Lessons 

" 19 Oct. '86. The old difficulty about compulsion soon 
crops up. 

" My object has been to make Dora like her lessons. I 
know all that may be said about the discipline derived from 



328 R. H. Quick 

doing what we don't like, but I also know that before a 
child can exert its powers of observation or reflection, there 
must be first a willing mind, so I want Dora to like her 
lessons. 

"But continuous attention even for five minutes requires 
some effort, and the effort is already becoming distasteful. I 
play ' Eggs in the Bush,' and ' Odd and Even,' but though 
these are fairly successful Dora does not yet enter into the 
notion of winning and losing. Then for the reading she knows 
about fifteen or twenty words very fairly, but she does not 
recognise them as we do without conscious effort, and she is 
at present by no means keen on making sentences or building 
words with printed letters. 

" Shall I give* up the reading for a bit and let her lose 
again the knowledge she has acquired? Locke's 'seasons of 
aptitude ' are of no practical value, I think. If they exist, one 
could not be on the watch for them. I have 'lessons' just 
after breakfast, the only time when I can reckon on being 
disengaged." 

" 4 Nov. '86. Dora has considerable powers of narrative. 
To-day she told about a storm in which she had been caught. 
In her emphatic way she described the sky, ' There wasn't a 
bit of blue left and it wasn't white but all dark, dark, dark 
sky.' When she had done she said, 'Would you like me to 
tell you that amusing story again ? ' 

" Her confusions of words are often droll : ' When you 
shout and a shout comes after you've done, isn't that tobacco ? ' 
(echo). On hearing of Putney she said, ' Isn't that where the 
stuff to mend the windows comes from?' Dora, drawing 
fancy birds on paper, asks her mother to guess what sort of 
birds they are meant for. Her mother (after several bad shots), 
' Eagles.' Dora, ' No, but you were very near that time. They 
are sea gulls.' " 

" io Nov. '86. 13, Farquhar Road, Upper Norwood. 
Dora's ideas are now in process of development by visits to the 



Dora and Oliver 329 

Crystal Palace. I wish to avoid exciting her and in some 
ways regret for her the remove from Sedbergh, but in Sedbergh 
there was the Schattenseite, that all the poor people made a 
great deal too much of her and she would have got exaggerated 
ideas of her own importance. When we took her out for the 
first time here she was impressed by the number of horses and 
cabs and said to her mother, ' Surely it must be market-day.' 
Reading lessons go on as usual. She has taken to writing of 
her own accord and she imitates the letters very cleverly. 
Her drawing power too is coming on very fast." 

"16 Nov. '86. The affection of brother and sister is a 
lovely sight. Dora is ready to give up to Oliver, whatever he 
takes a fancy to, and Oliver shows more affection to ' Dor ' — 
he pronounces her name so far — than to anyone except per- 
haps his mother. Just now Dora went out of the room and 
Oliver ran to the closed door and would not rest till I opened 
it and let him call, Dor ! which he did lustily. When Dora 
found that he had been distressed by her absence she was 
immensely pleased and made me tell her all about it. She 
soon repeated the experiment, but the old boy was busy with 
something else and did not concern himself this time." 



Dora Reading 

" 24 Nov. "&6. I used to say that Dora should not learn 
to read early, but now before she is four I find myself teaching 
her. The first years of life are spent in learning things and 
words, and all teachers fasten instinctively on the words. Now 
words are signs appealing to ear or eye, and I don't know why 
we should not give the visible sign to children as well as the 
vocal. So far Dora has been much interested in her lessons. 
I let the words she learns, and which I write on a card slip, 
increase very slowly. The number now is 60. I, can easily 
increase them in the wake of the poetry she learns with her 



330 R. H. Quick 

mother. She can now read the first lines of ' What does little 
birdie say?' Besides the words on slips of cardboard I keep 
a box of wooden letters. Dora chooses a word among her 
cardboard slips and I give her out the letters to make it. 
These she arranges for herself. In this way the forms of the 
letters are quite familiar to her. She calls I the stick, T the 
crossed stick, and so on. 

" At first I would not let her stand in her chair when at 
work, but her restlessness is so great that I find it better to put 
no restraint on her movements." 

"27 Nov. '86. We go through the 60 slips with her, and 
I see if I can ' throw out ' any; that is put on one side any she 
fails to recognise. This morning I did not succeed in throw- 
ing out a single one. 

" To-day I took a book in large type (Noah's Ark in 
Warne's Little Playmates) and she and I read together, i.e. 
I read all he words she did not know, but when we came to a 
word of the known 60, I only pointed to it and she said it. 
Sometimes she failed to recognise a word in type (e.g. day), I 
then took it from the slips, and put the slip above the printed 
word. She knew it then. 

" Arithmetic. She can now make in her mind (visualise) 
any number up to -five. It is very funny when I show her : : or 
:•: putting up her hand before her eyes and making the 
number in her mind." 

" 18 Dec. '86. My dear old boy is very different from 
what his sister was at the same age. He is by no means dull, 
but he comes on very slowly in speech, and though he has got 
to say ' Up Per ' for ' Uncle Percy ' and has a good many 
sounds with new conventional meanings he prefers signs to 
words." 

"21 Dec. '86. It is wonderful how the two children 
differ in character. Dora, from her infancy, has always got 
into a rage on hurting herself and has directed it against any- 
one who offered her sympathy. The boy always flies to some 



Dora and Oliver 331 

one to be consoled. Both have violent tempers. Dora as an 
infant tried to hurt anyone she could get at. I am thankful 
to say this way of venting ill-temper passed before she was old 
enough to do mischief. Now her temper is not so violent and 
it never goes beyond a howling fit, seldom so far. The boy at 
a very early age showed his passionateness by going down on 
all fours and bumping his forehead against the floor till he 
was taken up. He, too, has mended and now does not get 
beyond howling. Dora has always resented, or at best barely 
tolerated, caresses from her mother or me. The old boy 
seems much more affectionate. His affection for his sister is 
beautiful, and with him she is far more loving than with 
anyone else." 

"31 Jan. '87. One thing is brought home very forcibly, 
which is this. There is a vast difference between that perfect 
connection of word and symbol necessary for reading and the 
knowing the connection as the child knows it. The conse- 
quence is that when we put a child to read words which he 
' knows,' every recognition is a distinct effort. This series of 
efforts is tiring, and should not be long continued. Besides 
this the reading is of necessity staccato. Dora says poetry 
beautifully, and she i knows ' the words of ' Little Birdie.' 
If she says the verse her intonation is all one could wish, 
but if I give her the verse to read, she does read it and it 
becomes staccato. So I don't see at present how sentence 
reading can be taught before word reading has been practised 
to the point of ' mastery,' and this is a long job. 

" One of the Inspectors has recommended that children 
should be taught to read backwards before they are allowed 
to read forwards. This odd suggestion seems to me excel- 
lent. It supposes that the individual words must me familiar 
before the setitence can be read. If we took the child through 
the sentence backwards till every word was familiar, he might 
then begin at the beginning and read the sentence with the 
sense in it." 



332 R. H. Qtiick 

" 22 Feb. '87. I have often remarked that in saying 'by 
heart ' one goes simply by sequence of sound. 
" Dora to-day said Lord Houghton's 

' A fair little girl sat under a tree.' 

She said it very prettily, with clear appreciation of meaning, 
and neither fault nor hesitation. When she had finished she 
said, ' I nearly know that now.' To which her mother replied, 
'You quite know it; you said it very nicely.' 'Yes, but I 
flunked a bit,' said Dora. 

"Another poem, Wordsworth's 'The cock is crowing,' she 
gabbled, and when her mother objected she seemed hurt, and 
said, ' I knew it so dreadfully perfect ! ' " 

"4 April, '87. Though only one year nine months old, 
Oliver goes through the Sicilian Mariners' hymn-tune perfectly 
from beginning to end, and ' conducts ' with a stick all the 
time. It is the first case I have heard in which a child can 
sing, or at least hum, a tune before learning to talk. The 
music of the Crystal Palace has made a great impression on 
him, and especially the part of the ' dum-man ' (drummer) and 
of the conductor. 

" I am more and more convinced of the power of these 
early impressions, and also of the extreme difficulty of avoiding 
wrong and injurious impressions. As children are not guided 
by the considerations that weigh with us, we are tempted to 
invent irrational ways of dealing with them. They are ex- 
tremely trying, and grown-up people think of the minute's 
peace and quietness, and give the child what it cries for or 
deliberately humbug him. The fearful want of truthfulness 
which we find in so many children may come from the way 
in which they themselves have been deceived from infancy. 
We cannot be too careful in convincing children that they 
may depend entirely on what we say to them. Even as a 
matter of convenience it pays in the end. 

"This morning my boy wanted to take a large ivory 



Dora and Oliver 333 

paper-knife down stairs. I was afraid he might tumble over 
it, and said, ' Give it me and I will give it you at the bottom.' 
The old boy knew he was safe to get it, and yielded it without 
hesitation." - 

"19 Apr. '87. Oliver is getting to understand a great 
deal, and he makes great efforts to talk. He says, 'One, 
two,' and understands the meaning of the words. The other 
day, when there were three things, he tried to express the 
additional one by repeating the ' two ' with emphasis, ' One, 
two, two ! ' " 

" 23 April, '87. I have to-day given Dora her first writing 
lesson. There are several difficulties to be encountered. In 
order to put a form on paper one must have a conception of 
it in the mind. Children have apparently somewhat vague 
conceptions of" the forms they try to draw, and often the 
error in the drawing comes of imperfect conception of the 
form, not from the mechanical difficulty of representing it. 
So before the child can attempt to draw a letter he must 
have a conception of the letter. This is my reason for 
teaching at first Roman characters rather than script. Dora 
is familiar with the look of her own name, so I began with 
Dora in letters about half an inch in height. Then comes 
the difficulty about holding the pencil and the position of 
the body, and still more of the head. These points are 
neglected in teaching the ' infants.' Indeed, one often sees 
the infants in the gallery with slates clutched in the left 
arm and with a scrap of slate pencil in the right hand. In 
such conditions a skilful writer would have some difficulty 
in writing well ; and, though the children do get to write in 
this way, they acquire thoroughly bad habits from the first. 
I had some difficulty about the hand, and had still more 
difficulty in keeping the head up. Then comes, as in every- 
thing, the question, should we analyse and give the elements, 
pothooks, hangers, &c, or should we at first give the first 
word and analyse afterwards ? The second method seems 



334 J?- H- Quick 

most calculated to keep the child's interest and therefore 
attention, and this is more than compensation for some 
clumsiness in procedure. To-day I tried the plan of putting 
dots and here and there a curve with coloured pencil. Dora 
was more successful than I expected in guiding herself by 
these, and we accomplished ' Dora and Oliver.' " 



Dora's Lessons 

" 10 May, '87. What strikes me most is the very slow 
growth of the power of putting notions together. Dora is 
now over <\\ and a very bright, intelligent child, but she has 
difficulty that one would not expect about very simple opera- 
tions : e.g. she knows 'at.' I say 'What would "at" be if 
you put a hissing before it?' After a little floundering this 
is arrived at. Then I say 'Put "p" (I pronounce pur) before 
it.' Dora, ' fat.' ' No.' Dora, that,' and so on." 

"19 May, '87. The driver of a sound horse, when the 
road is good and level and the carriage light, expects him 
to trot, and if the horse won't, he treats this as laziness or 
obstinacy, and flogs him till he does. Teachers proceed in 
the same way with their pupils. They require from the 
pupil a particular action of the mind, and if that action 
seems to them within the pupil's power, and the pupil does 
not respond when called upon, they take it for granted that 
the pupil is lazy or obstinate, and in some form or other 
they lay on the lash. But in teaching my little daughter I 
see that the mind is like Babbage's machine, which occa- 
sionally played an unexpected freak and didn't act or acted 
wrongly. To-day, after working tant bien que mal at the fat, 
mat, rat series, I wrote down at, one of her most familiar 
words, and she totally failed to recognise it. Now a similar 



Dora and Oliver 335 

failure has often brought down a swingeing punishment even 
from a pretty easy-going teacher. And when a boy once 
gets frightened, his mind naturally refuses to act. You don't 
get him to think by threat of punishment ; you may as well 
try to hurry a snail by pricking it with a pin. But Dora 
was not in the least alarmed, and she was not sulky or 
lazy : simply her mind refused to act. Perhaps it is the 
same with adult minds too. From some unknown cause 
(probably our physical state) we may be at one time quite 
unable to make an effort of mind that at most times would 
be quite easy. This is certainly so with the young, yet very 
few teachers make allowance for such suspended action, and 
with a form teacher it is very difficult to do so. 



Dora 

"15 July, '87. In teaching my dear little girl the ele- 
ments, I am learning the elements of teaching. One of the 
first things which a teacher should learn is the amount of 
time and practice needed to incorporate even the simplest 
conceptions in the mind. In class teaching one easily makes 
the mistake of attributing the collective knowledge of the 
class to the average child in it. But when one watches the 
individual child one finds the slowness of appropriation quite 
bewildering. I have kept Dora to a small area that she 
might get to know the symbols for a few words thoroughly ; 
but after all this time (over a year) there are hardly a dozen 
words which she recognises without effort ; and if she is not 
disposed to effort, she fails with what ought to be quite 
familiar. This reached a climax to-day, when she stuck at 
a, though if I had asked her to write a she would have 
done it." 



336 R. H. Quick 



Dora and Oliver 

"28 July, '87. When grown people give way to bad 
temper, or in any way deliberately misconduct themselves, 
they think it necessary to invent some kind of excuse for 
themselves and to themselves ; but children have not this 
necessity. They go in for being naughty and calmly admit 
it. Our two . children, much as they differ in most things, 
agree not only in being at times deliberately naughty, but 
also in never feeling ashamed of themselves afterwards. They 
mostly are very affectionate to each other, but two days ago 
Oliver, in one of his bad tempers, tried to bite Dora, and 
yesterday he boasted to his mother about it and seemed to 
think it a joke." 

Dora 

" 20 Aug. '87. Dora composing as a printer is capital fun. 
To-day, when I said I should soon be ready for lessons, Dora 
said ' Shall I print?' /. 'Yes.' D. ' What fun ! I don't call 
it lessons ; it's like play.' I wonder where the child got her 
notion of the distinction between ' lessons ' and ' play.' I 
have been very careful to keep all sorts of unpleasant asso- 
ciations away from the ' lessons.' To-day Dora composed, 
'Dora is my little printer.' We then had finger counting. 
I hold up a fingers' on the right hand and b on the left ; 
and then, both being counted separately, I put them to- 
gether for the sum. Dora also counts backwards pretty fast 
from ten. I then told her I had a book (Miss Woods's Second 
School Poetry Book) I was going to read to her from. I read 
her part of Tennyson's ' Brook,' which she made me read 
over and over again, and also Wordsworth's ' O blithe new 
comer,' which she asked for, as I had read it when the book 



Dora and Oliver 337 

came in the other day. These pleased her immensely. I 
explain some things and words as I go along, but by no 
means all at first." 

"22 Aug. '87. What a wide opening there is for skill in 
teaching, even in its simplest conditions ! In teaching Dora 
I find more openings than I can avail myself of. To-day I 
tried the experiment of asking Dora, * If you had ten letters 
and you gave me half of them, how many would you have 
left ? ' Of course she didn't know, so I gave her ten letters, 
and she went to work to divide them into two equal lots. 
She first got six and four ; then seeing this was wrong, she 
took two from the six ; then settled that four would be the 
half of eight, and finally solved the problem. She was much 
interested to learn that if she put together two odd numbers 
she would get an even, and verified the fact for herself. She 
gave all her attention to this, as she had to the printing, but 
when I followed on to some reading in the Golden Primer, 
she failed to recognise well-known words, such as ' not.' Now 
here was a case likely to irritate the teacher and turn him 
into a driver; but I knew that the little brain was getting 
tired, so said, ' I'll read a bit to you,' and so we read on 
swimmingly, I pausing for her to fill in words that she knew. 
These changes in procedure are very valuable in teaching. 
In cricket a change bowler, though not so good as the man 
he supersedes, often takes a wicket that the other failed to 
get." 

" 1 Sept. '87. She does not take very kindly as yet to 
adding. To-day I showed her the double four domino ; she 
said at once 'Four, four.' 'What does that make?' 'Five.' 
' Count,' I said. She did, and got the right number. ' I 
know,' she said, 'but it's such a trouble.' 

" When I afterwards said some poetry to her she was 

interested as usual, and when I repeated the first two verses 

of 'The splendour falls on castle walls,' the 'dying, dying, 

dying,' was too much for the child, and her eyes filled with 

z 



338 R. H. Quick 

tears. She was ashamed of her weakness, and tried to make 
out it was from ' staring.' " 

" 2 Sept. '87. I have now been over a year (with many 
interruptions) giving Dora lessons. The results, as the Code 
counts ' results/ are poor indeed, but I am satisfied. ' Re- 
sults ' in the Code sense I never think of. So in teaching 
to read I try to get Dora to recognise each new word. ' Can 
you get me to know it?' asks Dora, and I answer, 'I'll try.' 
Say the word is ' gets.' I take a sheet of paper and write 
'let.' This Dora knows, and I then make her decide on 
' et ' and then 'get,' and lastly 'gets.' This of course is an 
easy example. The process is a very slow one, and I should 
probably find if I were teaching in class that I could not 
carry on my pupils all together. I don't wonder at the 
mechanical teaching that is the ordinary practice when I 
find what a demand on one's patience a single good child 
makes. One is constantly surprised at unexpected failures. 
The restlessness of children is intense. If my attention goes 
for an instant to a word or so I am writing for her, Dora has 
got hold of something — to-day a carefully sorted pile of my 
MS. which she made hay of." 

Dora's Arithmetic 

"10 Sept. '87. For notation would it not be better to 
start with nought? The whole thing would then become 
symmetrical. Nought, nought 1, nought 2 ... nought 9; ten, 
ten i, ten 2 . . . ten 9, twenty, &c. I am much inclined to 
teach Dora on this plan and make her count thus for the 
present. Our awkward nomenclature between 10 and 20 
spoils the perception of the decimal system." 

"17 Sept. '87. I find the last experiment in naming 
numbers very successful, so much so that Dora from one 
lesson could tell any number up to 99. She calls 1 1 ten 
one, 12 ten two, &c. The whole nomenclature is thus un- 



Dora and Oliver 339 

derstood, for she understood at once that 20 was two tens, 30 
three tens, &c." 

" 10 Sept. '87. Our system of separate words on cards 
did not lead beyond itself quite so fast as I expected. It 
requires more analytical power than the child possesses. 
We have somewhat drifted away from it to Meiklejohn and 
Crane's Golden Primer (a capital book), which works on the 
' c-at, m-at, f-at ' principle, but gives junction words (of, and, 
the) independently of it. I should think a regular drill in 
the ad, ed, id, od, ud would be the most rapid way, if the 
child was not bored by it, but is not that a fatal objection ? " 

"27 Sept. '87. The reading gets on slowly but very 
surely, I think. No doubt the imperfections of our nota- 
tion are many and great, but this gives an opening for 
the teacher's art. The grand thing is to teach the normal 
thoroughly first and then to point out deviations, all danger 
of confusion being stopped by thorough familiarity with the 
normal. To-day Dora was interested by my pointing out 
some anomalies. First I got her to see that we might give 
a vowel a long or short sound. I took bit, sit, spit, and 
showed her that we sometimes put an e at the end, just to 
make the inside vowel long, bite, site, spite. I then remarked 
that we had a lot of trouble with a because it had so many 
sounds, as I proved by words she knew, at, are, what. In 
the reading we had ' half-past two o'clock.' ' Clock ' we 
had already got at by oc, ock (I pointed out that c and k 
had the same sound). The rest came out ' ha/f pazt,' but 
when she read the whole sentence she saw at once what 
was the usual pronunciation, and laughed at her previous 
mispronunciation." 

"30 Sept. '87. 'Naughtiness' is a fact in the lives of 
children of which they themselves are thoroughly conscious. 
Dora makes great efforts to get over her naughtiness, and 
when she is judiciously treated, as she is by her mother, she 
very soon comes round. The great thing is to give children 



340 R. H. Quick 

time to recover. Very often their elders worry them to do 
or say this or that, and raise opposition which would be 
entirely avoided if the bad temper were allowed to subside. 
Dora wishes to be good. When she was unwell the other 
evening, and had been put to bed without saying her prayers, 
she told me she had not said them, and asked me to ' kneel 
down and pray God to make me good.' " 

"n Oct. '87. Children are full of pent-up energy, and 
this energy oozes almost constantly through the fingers. 

" It is impossible to keep Dora's hands quiet. One minute 
she has pulled open a drawer and is ransacking the (to 
her) not very interesting contents. The next she has got 
hold of my pencil and broken the point ; next she has 
seized on a book I was reading and extracted the marker. 
In all this there is not the smallest intention to do mischief, 
but simply an effort to justify the instinct to do something. 
Strange that this instinct has been so persistently neglected by 
the teacher ! 

" There is a striking passage in Emerson's essay on Educa- 
tion where he compares the patience with which the naturalist 
waits and watches with the impatience of those who have to 
do with children. Milton speaks of haling and dragging our 
choicest wits to an asinine feast of sow-thistles and brambles. 
This language was not too strong then, and, I am afraid, would 
often not be too strong now. But is there then to be no 
haling and dragging of the young? If the young don't want 
to come our way, are they to choose their own? I have a 
difficulty with Dora even in the short lessons that I give her, 
only an hour after breakfast. Writing she likes, reading she 
tolerates, but she is bored by anything to do with numbers. 
Should I drop the counting altogether?" 

Dora 

"15 Oct. '87. I have had a good proof to-day of the 
value of giving a child something to do. Dora has not been 



Dora and Oliver 341 

in good form lately about her lessons, and to-day at breakfast 
she had one of her queer attacks of general ill-temper. No 
doubt grown people are subject to like attacks, but they 
suppress them or invent some pretext to excuse them. But 
the child does not see any necessity for .this, and to use 
Mrs Poyser's simile, it is like a clock that strikes not to 
show the time, but because there is something wrong in its 
inside. Dora was intolerable at breakfast, and I dreaded the 
prospect of lessons. However, I thought I would try, and 
instead of the ordinary routine I set her to work at her 
printing. She quickly recovered her temper, and all went 
smoothly." 

"28 Oct. '87. I have not lost faith in the 'method of 
investigation ' as the true method for intellectual training, but 
I quite despair of its ever being adopted by the ordinary 
teacher. It seems so fearfully slow. I have worked at Dora's 
reading with great advantages, but at present I have not had 
any rewarding success. That the children have remarkable 
memories is shown by the way in which both of them re- 
member the names of animals and birds pointed out to 
them in their picture books. But Dora has never shown 
any remarkable memory with the signs for words. I began 
with words written on cards, and hoped to analyse these 
when they were well known. But the foundation seems laid 
in quicksand. Dora never seems to recognise any word 
easily. To-day she failed with 'not.' Da hort alles auf! 
as the Germans say. I thought, too, we had reached the 
stage when she would be able to recognise words, not as 
the symbols of things, but the symbols of sounds. To-day 
I tried, but the failure was deplorable. In ' better ' I got 
' bet,' but failed utterly with ' ter.' 

" No doubt the ordinary teaching, which one may call 
' the method of the crib ' (the teacher acting as a crib di- 
rectly the pupil sticks), will continue to be the ordinary 
method so long as human patience retains its present limits. 



342 R. H. Quick 

And yet it's a pity. We want the young to use their wits 
and become able to find their own way, not to drag them 
along as if they were born blind like kittens. l " 

" i Feb. '88. Dora was five years old to-day. She is 
fanciful and capricious, and has never shown a child-like re- 
spect for the superior knowledge of her teacher. Anything 
that she can do, and do by herself, she takes an interest in. 
Like Oliver, she resents being helped. She is clever with 
her hands, and her writing is quite remarkable. She has just 
written ' Dora is five to-day. This is Dora's birth-day ' so 
well on the blackboard that any one coming in would have 
supposed it to be the writing of a grown-up person. But 
with her reading she comes on very slowly. Her poetry she 
remembers, though she does not now care to hear it or to 
hear anything new. She still keeps up her love of ' pre- 
tending.' Yesterday we started on a new game which worked 
very well. She was a girl teacher and I was a little boy. 
She held up fingers and asked me ' How many?' She was 
very much pleased when I said wrong, and she corrected me 
promptly. She also wrote on the blackboard words for me 
to read. She afterwards told me the story of ' Puss in Boots.' 
She has only heard it once, and her reproduction of it was 
wonderfully good. Much might have been published as it 
stood if I had taken it down in shorthand." 

" 28 Feb. '88. The great mistake in teaching children 
generally comes from the notion that the mind is strengthened 
by trying to do something that it cannot do easily. Grown 
people find they can't make progress without effort ; they 
therefore wish to get effort from children. This they do by 
trying to force children to do what the children find distasteful. 
I don't say that children should never have to do what is dis- 
tasteful, but I do say that the mind of children cannot be 

1 [' Before teaching a child to read we should teach him to see.' 
Rousseau.] 



Dora and Oliver 343 

exercised on what is distasteful. When the task is distasteful 
to the child the teacher enforces nothing but mechanical 
action, either of voice or hand, which may produce mechanical 
aptitude, but certainly does not exercise the mind. The 
commonest cause of the task's being distasteful is that it is just 
beyond their power. Later on, the task may be distasteful, 
because it is too easy, but this is not likely to happen with 
the very young. When the child shows no eagerness and 
his attention runs away from what the teacher proposes to him, 
the teacher should always carefully consider why this is. 
There was a stage when Dora ' did not like ' her lessons, but 
this has long passed away. Dora thinks we have more 'larks' 
than lessons, and I certainly take pains to keep her amused. 
We grown people, elderly people especially, don't feel inclined 
to take as much bodily exercise as is good for us ; but it seems 
provided that little bodies should get plenty of exercise, and 
without taking constitutionals they are on the go all day long. 
Probably in the young activity of mind is provided for no less 
than activity of body. The teacher has to guide the activity 
and cannot do this by force." 

" 20 March, '88. Dora is now greatly delighted with 'map- 
geography.' I have a big wall map of Europe. This I put on 
the floor and orient accurately with a compass. Dora then 
asks questions about the countries, rivers, &c. She remembers 
a great deal that I tell her. She is interested in any country 
that she can connect with anything in her life. Italy, e.g. 
(though she resents 'the boot'), becomes interesting for her 
from the Italian organ-grinders who come and say ' Grazie 
signorina,' when she gives them coppers. The art of teaching 
informative subjects is simply the art of making pleasing 
associations. ' To them that have shall more be given ' is the 
law in the kingdom of knowledge. To-day Dora asked what 
the word ' Lapland ' was on the map. I did not much want to 
tell her, as I thought it would be a mere name, but as she 
asked I said ' Lapland.' ' Oh,' said Dora, ' we have a Lap- 



344 R* H- Qttick 

land bunting in the bird book. Do you know they put in 
birds, if they have been only seen in England once or twice ? ' 
And then she found on the map which way the bird would 
have had to fly to get to England." 

"4 April, ^88. We hear 'a good deal about the tenacity of 
children's memory. I should like to have more definite facts 
than I can find in any books on pedagogy. I myself remember 
a great deal that happened before I was five, things that I can 
never have heard of from others. Dora's memory is strangely 
capricious. She remembers the names of all sorts of queer 
geese in the book of ornithology. Per contra, she could not 
remember ever having heard ' White sand and grey sand,' 
though for a long time she was very fond of the round. 
Hastings, where we were for six weeks two years ago, has quite 
passed from her mind, sea, boats and all." 

" 9 April, '88. Her notions of numbers are gradually 
forming, but very slowly. She can add two pretty easily, but 
subtract two she cannot. I am convinced that number notions 
are formed far more slowly than teachers suppose, and the 
ordinary gabble of words prevents them from seeing this." 

" 14 April, J 88. W. H. Payne maintains that Rousseau is 
wrong in making children's powers and children's likes and 
tendencies differ so widely from those of grown people. 
According to him the difference is more in degree than in kind. 
But I am struck more and more with the difference in kind. 
No one but those who associate closely with children would 
believe what an immense amount of their lives is spent in 
dramatising. Dora has gone on for months every morning as 
the printer's boy ' George ' or as she sometimes says ' George 
Albert Dodge.' The other day when printing she said in a 
bold voice, ' Printing is a nuisance, Sir ; ' I was somewhat vexed 
and said, ' I don't think it a nuisance.' Whereupon Dora said 
in her sweet childish treble, quite different from the other 
voice, ' Father, shall I tell you why I said that? It was only 
for something to say. I did not really meant it.' " 



Dora and Oliver 345 

"18 Aug. '88. Dora by 'composing' with her 25 bowls 
of letters is getting to spell many words nicely, tho' I don't give 
her reading lessons now. She is getting to interpret sounds 
as indicated by letters, and the plan on which I started her 
has been abandoned. I am inclined to think that our spelling 
is uniform enough to establish a regular system, and then 
variations from it must be noted. We every day ' compose ' 
the day of the week and month. To-day ' eighteen ' presented 
difficulties. I told Dora that the Germans call ' eight ' acht 
and that we used to pronounce the word with a guttural. 

" We afterwards went to numbers. Dora is now very clever 
in counting backwards 1-2 ; 1-3-2-1; up to 20. She also gives 
the odd and even upwards and downwards very well. I 
afterwards let her count in actual money, gold, silver and 
copper. She is very fond of this and knows all the coins. 
'To seek the useful in everything,' says Plato, 'is unworthy of 
a freeman.' I should alter this into ' to think first of the 
useful, &c.' But the concrete involves the abstract and the 
abstract must be evolved from it. Dora gets to know about 
money. This may be ' useful ' ; so much the better, say I ; 
but that is not what I go for. Through this counting of money 
she learns a great deal about numbers, and I hope to evolve 
many truths from the coin counting." 

Oliver's First Lessons 

"19 Oct. '88. For the last five days Oliver, whose three 
years and four months is nearly completed, has had lessons. 
His eagerness is delightful. I have begun with writing and he 
has gone over with a lead pencil his own name ' Oliver,' written 
in red. He is beginning to get a little command of his pencil 
already. 

" In numbers I find he is quite safe up to two, but has no 
notion of anything beyond, though he is supposed to count up 
to five. When I show him three counters, he can't tell how 



346 JR. H. Quick 

many, nor can he count them. He is a thoughtful boy and 
has all his wits about him." 

Dora 

"19 Dec. '88. Dora, though generally a good girl, has 
fits of a defiant mood. To-day at dinner she took a great 
quantity of salt, which she had been told not to do. Her 
mother told her not to take so much. Dora. * You took a lot 
just now.' To this her mother made no reply. Dora. ' Why 
don't you say Never mind what I do, you do what you're told ? 
That's what I expected you to say.' " 

" 27 Dec. '88. My attempt to teach Dora without coercion 
is at the present stage (she is five weeks short of six) a deplor- 
able failure. I have done everything I could think of to make 
her lessons of about 45 minutes a day pleasant to her. This 
has to all appearances succeeded till quite lately, but now she 
has taken a notion into her head that she ' doesn't like lessons,' 
and she sets herself deliberately to resist and give all the 
trouble she can. Her writing, of which she is proud, she 
does — writing poetry she knows by heart ; but she soon breaks 
down and never tries to do her best. Then she takes to 
gymnastics, as she calls it, that is she wriggles and twists about 
and refuses to attend to anything. When I tell her to do and 
say anything she purposely takes what I say in a wrong sense 
and endeavours to annoy me by doing or saying the wrong 
thing. 

" This extremely unamiable mood produces the worst results 
all round. Of course it is impossible to teach the child, and I 
must send her away, which is just what pleases her, or I must 
insist on some perfunctory work. We seem to have arrived at 
an impasse. I trust that a way out of it will be shown me." 

" 29 May, '89. Dora is now getting very clear notions of 
numbers, counting always by tens and not using eleven, twelve, 
&c. She also thoroughly understands fractions, but not the 



Dora and Oliver 347 



a ma 



truth that - = — . I keep this out of sight at present. She 
b mb 

draws squares and circles and understands about angles. She 

had a little difficulty in getting the notion of an angle, but at 

length made out for herself that the length of the sides did 

not affect the size of the angle. By the way, our nomenclature 

1 triangle ' ' rectangle,' is very confusing." 

"27 Dec. '89. Dora (now within six weeks of seven) told 

me to-day that she used to be puzzled by the line 

< And thinner, clearer, farther going,' 

as she took farther for father. ' Now/ she said, ' I've made it 
out ; it means ' further.' ' 

" She has come across the philosophical difficulty about 
phenomena, and asked her mother, ' How do we know that we 
see things alike? How do I know that if a rose looks red to 
me and the leaves green, it looks the same to you?' " 

Dora and Oliver, Arithmetic 

" 21 March, '90. To-day Oliver (four years seven months) 
asked me what I could not tell him. ' Father, how many 
thirds make a half ? ' My boy is very intelligent in his counting 
(for which I use counters or money), but I should say not at 
all abnormally intelligent, and I am extremely careful not to 
stimulate thought. So I told him I could not tell him yet. 
Then I had a talk with Dora (seven years one month) and told 
her Oliver's difficulty. This made her eager to find out ; so 
we got a sheet of paper, crossed it exactly down the middle, 
and then in thirds. Dora now saw that the half was made up 
of a third and half of a third. With her compasses she then 
measured the half of a third and found it was a sixth. She 
discovered further that the third was made up of two-sixths. 
This brought her to the fact that a half was three sixths. I told 
her nothing. It may seem odd that a child of seven can learn 



34-S R. H. Quick 

in this way, and still odder that a man of nearly 60 can. But 
it is a simple fact that I had never grasped the ratio \ : \ before, 
as that of a third to a third and the half of a third. The 
human thinking machine would act at a much greater advan- 
tage if it formed clear conceptions of elementary ideas before 
it took to symbols." 



Professional Ignorance 349 

TRAINING OF TEACHERS 

Rollings Method of Teaching and Studying Belles Lettres 

" In reading such books as this one cannot help being 
struck with the little progress we make in the art of teaching. 
Take e.g. the simple matter of exercises. Rollin gives rea- 
sons why the study of language should begin with : (1) reading 
an author, (2) having it explained by the teacher, (3) last in 
order, exercises. His reasons may be good or bad, but school- 
masters know nothing about them and start their pupils in 
language almost at random. T. K. Arnold wrote a useful 
book for Latin Prose and got a name. Schoolmasters there- 
fore adopted his Henry's First Latin Book and his First 
French Book, &c, books which for beginners are intensely 
absurd, even if the books were better and kept to the high- 
ways of the language instead of bewildering the beginner 
by taking him into by-paths. Yet some people (M. G. at 
Cranleigh) put boys to begin even French with his book or 
a book like De Fivas. 

" I shouldn't grumble if headmasters had thought about 
the subject, knew the different ways in which a language may 
be begun, and deliberately preferred such a plan as this. I 
might differ from a headmaster who adopted such a plan as 
beginning with De Fivas, but I am not infallible, and I would 
by all means have him exercise his own judgment, but what 
I grumble at is that he has not judged at all, that he knows 
nothing and cares nothing about the various plans which 
are open to him, and so adopts any book that he finds 
in general use, and quotes in his defence the practice of 
other people, most of whom are acting as unintelligently as 
himself." 



350 R. H. Quick 



Training of secondary teachers 

" Temple's plan was to come and take a form in the pre- 
sence of a young master. The form-master never knew when 
he was coming. He just came in, said he should take the 
form, and went on, the form-master looking on. Sometimes 
Temple did not stay more than half-an-hour, and left the 
form-master to finish the lesson. When Temple had paid 
several such visits and let the masters see how he had 
taught, he would come and look on himself and afterwards 
give hints to the master about his teaching. Arthur Butler 
did the same at Haileybury and found that his masters liked 
it Bradley's plan at Marlborough was to have elaborate re- 
views and to enter a carefully written report touching all weak 
points in a book which was kept in the Common Room. One 
great advantage of this plan was that a new master, by reading 
this book, could find out the sort of things in which forms 
failed. Of course such a plan would be valueless unless the 
reports were more exactly correct than I should have thought 
possible." 

A Proposed Training College 

"17 March, '75. On Monday I was at a meeting at Sir 
J. Kay Shuttleworth's about a training College. There had 
been previous meetings, and I had been at two of them. In 
the days of the Endowed Schools Commission the Commis- 
sioners had pressed on the Trustees of the Betton Charity 
to let some endowment go to a Training College. The 
Trustees did not see it and the Commission was moribund, 
so the correspondence ceased. The present Charity Commis- 
sioners have all the powers of the Endowed Schools Commis- 
sion, and Robinson is one of them, but there is a change of 
tradition. These Charity Commissioners have hitherto always 
had to get consent of trustees, and a certain Sir James Hill 



Proposed Training College 351 

(model official person apparently) seems inclined to let the 
more stringent provisions of the Endowed Schools Act be a 
dead letter. We saw the Commissioners, but got little by so 
doing. In their written answer they coolly propose that we 
should tackle the Trustees. 

" On Monday we found as usual that there were all sorts 
of opinions as to what should be done. Sir J. K. S. has 
drawn up a sort of double-barrelled proposal, but whether 
we should attempt to get up a College for ushers or for 
men who have taken high honours at Oxford or Cambridge 
seems a disputed point. At present we are writing for the 
advice of the Head Masters' Committee. 

"The more one goes on in life, the more one is struck 
by the boundless ignorance of people. There were w r e (Lord 
Lytton in Chair, Sir J. K. S., Percival, Abbott, Faunthorpe, 
Brereton, Tufnell, Eve, Dr Rigg, myself). We had met to 
consider a scheme for a Training College for secondary mas- 
ters. In the middle of the discussion Tufnell said casually, 
1 By the way, what have they of this sort in France ? ' Sir 
J. K. S. didn't know, but thought it didn't matter : ' French 
education was in ruins.' I muttered Ecole Normale Supe- 
rieure, but not very loud. Like most Englishmen speaking 
a foreign language, I avoid false pronunciation as much as 
possible by not pronouncing the words loud enough for any- 
one to understand them. Nobody else volunteered informa- 
tion or seemed to think further information desirable. Even 
to such men ' France ' apparently was synonymous with ' the 
continent,' and nobody said that there was another nation 
whose educational system is supposed not to be in ruins." 

"1 May, '75. On the 29th there was the meeting of 
Sir J. K. Shuttleworth's Committee with the Head Masters' 
Committee about a Training College at the University or else- 
where. What we wanted was an expression of opinion from 
the H. M.'s that something ought to be done for training 
men before they were intrusted with a form in school, but 



352 R. H. Qtcick 

bodies won't move without a leader, and somehow no head- 
master there took a very keen interest in the matter, Percival 
excepted, and he writes very much better than he speaks. 
The Masters said they had considered the thing over and 
over before, and had come to the conclusion that nothing 
could be done. On the whole they seemed rather bored, 
and were simply obstructive. 

" But it seems to me that, whether one considers the 
question a piiori or a posteriori, one must conclude that 
the present state of things is intensely bad. It is easy to 
show a priori that a man has a great deal to learn before 
he can be a competent and clear-sighted teacher. And if 
one considers the men that our present system produces, 
one cannot help being profoundly dissatisfied. Although our 
public schoolmasters are men of the highest education and 
of marked success in intellectual studies, they hardly any of 
them know or care anything about the intellectual side of 
their profession. All their energy goes into petty details, and 
they care for nothing else. Some few of them have outside 
intellectual pursuits, but most are too hard worked to do more 
than simply amuse themselves when school-work is over. . . . 

"To put a senior classic without any preparation to teach 
small boys Latin is like setting Joachim or Millais down to 
teaching beginners the rudiments of music or painting. And 
in one way the artist or musician has a great pull over the 
classical scholar. They can inspire enthusiasm by drawing 
or playing for the learners, but the fourth form would not be 
much impressed by Hallam's construing to them or making 
verses for them." 

Waste of power in teaching through ignorance of 
the teachers 

" The great weakness of school systems is that the forces 
do not act precisely in the same direction, and in no country 



Examination of Teachers 353 

is this want of force so enormous as among ourselves. As 
for system we have none, and whatever is done is done with 
immense labour. We are of the race Mr M. Arnold has 
nicknamed ' Hebrews,' people who think everything must 
come all right if they mean well and keep pegging away. 
Force is the great thing, we say : don't let us waste time 
in overnicety about its direction. So if we take any good 
English school we find an immense amount of activity in it, 
activity of the masters, that is. Every man works his eight 
or ten hours a day. He glories in the amount of the work 
he gets through, and thinks of it as a good thing in itself 
independently of results. So he is quite contented if he 
himself is fully employed and his boys are orderly and learn 
their lessons. What the outcome of his instructions is, how 
his teaching fits in with the teaching the boys have got 
before they come to him, and after they rise to a higher 
form, he never asks himself; in fact, he knows nothing 
about the work of his colleagues, and they know nothing 
about his. 

" I was once talking to an architect, and on asking him 
some simple question about the thrust of an arch, I found 
he knew nothing whatever about the matter. ' How do you 
avoid the danger of your buildings coming down?' said I. 
' Oh,' he replied, ' we always make everything so thick that 
there cannot be any risk.' In other words, he wasted a pro- 
digious amount of force in everything he built just for want 
of knowing where the forces should be applied. And this he 
did at the expense of his clients. In a similar way our school- 
masters lavish force, but the loss in their case is partly their 
own, partly their clients'." 

Examination of Teachers 

" If we allow, as I think we must, that some first-rate 
teachers would do very badly in examination, and that some 
of those distinguished in the examination would make very 

2A 



354 R. H. Quick 

bad teachers, we may be accused of instituting tests which 
are really no tests at all. But in point of fact these exami- 
nations are not instituted as tests, but we think that anyone 
who wishes to teach may well prepare for this examination, 
and we think every teacher would be the better for doing 
so. The bishops insist on all candidates for their examina- 
tions (all Cambridge candidates at least) having passed the 
Voluntary, and no one is admitted to the Voluntary till 
he has attended certain lectures. Of course a carper might 
have said, ' Here is a pretty test for Holy Orders — have you 
attended so many lectures? If not, you are unfit to be 
ordained.' And of course the bishops and the Universities 
would have replied, ' It is true a man's fitness is quite inde- 
pendent of the attendance at these lectures, but we think 
candidates for Holy Orders will be benefited by attending 
them, and so we impose the condition on all who wish to 
take Orders." 

Teachers' Examination of College of Preceptors 

" I am now looking over these Teachers' papers. There 
is a good deal of stuff and verbiage, but somebody is sure 
to say something sensible. The English is generally very 
bad — full of long words, or slipslop, or both. One has such 
expressions as ' tables without legs to,' ' on purpose to writing,' 
used instead of ' for the purpose of.' 

" One of my questions was ' The uses and drawbacks of 
the black-board.' Most take arithmetic as the subject to 
illustrate their use of the black-board, and incidentally show 
much bad teaching. Not one of them suggests drawing lines 
or other magnitudes and subdividing them to show the mean- 
ing of fractions. They write ' the rule ' or work a sum with 
copious explanations. 

" I asked about the effect of marks on learning and teach- 
ing. The latter effect the teachers don't seem at all conscious 



Training of Teachers 355 

of. Only one has said that marking makes the teacher more 
attentive to the individual pupil. The fact is, marking has a 
tremendous influence over the teaching. It tends to convert 
the teacher into an examiner and exacter of work. In one 
way this is good ; it tends to stop the ' copious explanation ' 
style of teaching ; but in another way it is bad, for in his 
effort to mark fairly the master is driven too much on ex- 
acting memory-work only ; other work cannot be knocked oft' 
and docketed with the same certainty. Then again, marks 
keep the teaching to the matter in hand and prevent the 
teacher, who is brimming over with knowledge, from diva- 
gations. Per contra marks often act like a strait-waistcoat 
and prevent all activity, even of the healthiest kind." 

Training of Teachers. A debate 

"Feb. 10, 1877. Last night I was at Abbott's, where we 
had the first dinner of the London U. U.'s. 1 The subject 
was ' The Training of Teachers.' Abbott spoke in favour 
of preliminary instruction: (1) in the history of education, 
(2) in mental physiology, (3) in class drill, (4) in class man- 
agement, (5) in ways of teaching. He cut down his details 
too much, and the instances he gave were pet dodges of his 
own which other men might not take to. The best illustration 
he gave of the need of younger masters being looked after was 
his own early correction of composition. He nearly rewrote 
the boy's copies of verses, &c, and the consequence was, not 
merely that the corrections were useless, but positively mis- 
chievous. The boys couldn't take in all, so they took in 
none, and the amount of correction discouraged them. No 
doubt young teachers, especially if they are energetic, fall into 
many such mistakes as these; but if they are sensible men a 

1 A small club of London schoolmasters who met at each others' 
houses for symposia, in both senses of the word. 



356 R. H. Quick 

hint from a supervising superior would put them right. So 
far, then, these mistakes prove merely the need of supervision 
for the young teacher. Fitch gave an account of Training 
Colleges, and said that trained teachers were far superior to 
others as teachers, but that they were narrowed by being so 
separated from people of other pursuits and interests. He 
gave an amusing account of the commencement of training 
in this country. Bell's system at Westminster was to make 
the candidate teachers take their places in the lowest forms 
and work upwards, going through every stage themselves. 

Lancaster, in the Borough Road, did not require this. B , 

a School Inspector, differed from Fitch about the superiority 
of trained teachers. He heartily wished, he said, that the 
Training Colleges would give knowledge only, and would not 
attempt to teach teaching. The consequence of the attempt 
was that all the trained teachers had their cut and dried 
methods, by which the Inspectors were perfectly sickened. 
They always began a lesson in the same way. If it was 
grammar, they asked, 'What is grammar?' If it was an 
object-lesson, they began by showing a lump of coal and 
saying it was opaque, &c. X. said he had learnt a great 
deal by being a supernumerary at Uppingham, where he took 
different forms and talked over the lesson with the form- 
masters afterwards. En parenthese, I asked B. what he 
thought of Fearon's book on School Inspection. He said 
it had been sent him by the Education Office, but he had 
not read it. Every man has his own way of doing things. 
The book would take him two or three hours at the most 
to read ; he has it sent him from the office, and yet he has 
not interest enough in other people's ways to care to read 
it. Much improvement seems impossible so long as young 
men are so entirely self-satisfied that they find nothing to 
learn. 

" But the event of the evening was a speech from Walker, 
late of Manchester, now of St Paul's. Walker is a great force, 



F. W. Walker on Training 357 

and he embodies in an intelligent form all the mistrust in 
training which shows itself unintelligently in most men. His 
speech was somewhat after this manner. ' I must say I 
am profoundly sceptical of any benefit to be derived from 
training. It is not of the least use lecturing young men 
about teaching when they have had no experience of the 
thing itself. I am sure I have learnt much more from what 
Dr Abbott has said this evening than I could possibly have 
learnt from it if I had not been a great many years teaching. 
And I am inclined to think that harm is often done by what 
is called training in teaching. At Manchester I had among 
my assistants some first-rate trained masters, but there was a 
mechanical completeness about their teaching which was very 
deadening. Whatever was the subject, they had the whole 
thing completely at their fingers' ends, and when they had 
gone through it one felt the thing was done with, and one 
never wanted to hear of it again so long as one lived. There 
was no growth in the knowledge they implanted. It did not 
in the least inspire the desire for further knowledge. An in- 
tellectual man from the University might seem very inferior 
in teaching power, but the boys' minds in the end were more 
awakened by him, and there was endless power of growth 
in the man himself: he was not finished off like the other 
men. Then as to class drill, we may have a great deal too 
much of it. Really good, inspiriting teaching is perhaps im- 
possible with what is called by trained schoolmasters perfect 
order. I have found a good deal of seeming laxity of dis- 
cipline in the forms of the very best teachers. I think, 
therefore, that a man who has the activity of mind and the 
general interests which our best Universitymen have will do 
better in the schools themselves without any artificial system 
of training.' 

" So far Walker, and as he was by far the strongest man 
there (Abbott might beat him by* agility, as in the P. R. a 
light weight might sometimes get the better of a heavy weight, 



358 R. H. Quick 

but in strength W. is the better man), as W., I say, was the 
strongest man present, he had what seemed an easy victory. 
Abbott indeed objected with good effect that the deficiencies 
of our present trained teachers come, not from their know- 
ledge of methods of teaching, but from their want of extended 
knowledge and culture. For my own part I sincerely want to 
get at the truth of the matter, and if I find myself opposed 
to Walker and Hutton, who doubt ' whether there is or can 
be a definite and teachable art of teaching as distinct from 
a thorough knowledge of the subject to be taught ' {Spectator, 
10 Feb. '77), it is because I see crying evils in our present 
practice, and when things are intolerable as they are, we 
should not keep harping on a priori objections to all at- 
tempts at improvement. I say the objections are a priori, 
because we have no experience of men or women who are 
both highly educated and also trained as teachers. A boy 
or girl learns to read, write and cipher in our elementary 
schools, is then put to teach other children all day long for 
three years, then has knowledge pumped in as fast as possible 
in a training college and issues forth the trained teacher. 
With a young person so brought up we compare a man who 
remained at a public school under really intellectual teachers 
for five or six years, and then had this teaching continued 
for three or four years more by the ablest men at the Uni- 
versity. It is discovered that the poor certificated master is 
much more narrow in his intellect than the University man, 
and we jump to the conclusion that this narrowness must 
have been caused by the one thing he has had and the 
other man has not had — instruction in methods of teaching. 
So our dread of the 'pragmatic and pedantic class' is really 
an objection a priori. I am not prepared to say that no one 
would be made pragmatic or pedantic by pedagogic techni- 
calities, but if there is any risk of the kind I think we should 
encounter it rather than go on as we are. No doubt the 
badness of the teaching in our lower middle-class schools 



Cambridge Conference on Training 359 

and in our girls' schools comes from the want of mental 
training, not of scholastic training in the teachers, and no 
amount of scholastic learning would make up for this ; but 
I think these teachers would teach the better (or less badly), 
and would have a more intelligent interest in their profession 
if they received some instruction in it. Perhaps this instruc- 
tion should not be given at first. Walker's best point was 
that the mind is not open to receive knowledge about a 
subject till it has some acquaintance with the thing itself. 
I fear that Mrs Grey, who is apt to stick to the best pos- 
sible instead of the best obtainable, has not arranged for the 
best possible even in this case, for her students are not to 
be allowed to earn money while students. I should wish the 
learners to be teachers from the first, but they should have 
plenty of time and they should work under supervision and 
should see teaching. Every large school might have a young 
teacher or two attached as supernumeraries, and they might 
work under different masters in turn." 

Cambridge Conference on Training of Teachers 

" 28 Nov. 1877. I have been to Cambridge to-day to 
attend the discussion in the Arts Schools. Lately I have 
been so firmly impressed with my weakness as a speaker 
and of the horrors endured from bad speaking that I had 
meant not to open my lips. But I was so struck with the 
poorness of the speaking that I broke my resolution and 
spoke rather in a rambling fashion, as I had a large area of 
subject and had not settled beforehand what I was going to 
say. But I gain this much from the experience, that if I can 
get over nervousness (to-day I was not particularly nervous) 
and know the heads of what I intend to say, I can at all 
events speak up to the English average. I never yet have 
spoken with notes, and so tend to discursiveness. In ser- 
mons one has platitudes to fall back upon, and so extempore 



360 R. H. Quick 

preaching is the worst training possible for exercise in speak- 
ing. But enough of mere speaking. 

" A memorial had been presented to the Senate urging the 
University : (1) to provide teaching in didactics by professors 
or otherwise, (2) to examine on the subject. Abbott began 
and spoke methodically, first on need, secondly on means. 
He combated the notions that the teacher was born, not made, 
and that training was narrowing. All this was methodically 
done, but without much go in it, and perhaps more enter- 
taining to people fresh to the subject than it was to me. 
He then hit upon a point I had thought of, the greatly in- 
creased and increasing complexity of studies, which makes 
some rationale of instruction necessary. He then said that 
Percival recommended testing the practical skill of young 
masters by the state of their forms at the end of the first 
year. (A poor suggestion ; who could test the state of a 
form, coming in from the University and not knowing what 
the boys were when the young master first took charge of 
them?) Abbott gave his own experience, which was that in 
beginning to teach in a ragged school at Cambridge all his 
pupils gradually deserted him. The end of Abbott's speech 
was the best thing in it. Bradley, of University College, 
Oxford, used to say that every new master cost the school 
an additional year's salary by his bad carving in hall and 
another by his bad teaching in school. Eve came next and 
made some good points, but jerkily. He said he had such 
great difficulty in getting rudimentary subjects well taught that 
his boys spent far too long time on them. Teachers should 
stand on the shoulders of their predecessors. Floating know- 
ledge of the art of teaching never gets concentrated. One 
great use of training is that it sets teachers to think about 
teaching. Stuart came next. Henry Sidgwick then asked 
questions. There were, he said, two parts of the scheme : 
(1) practical training, (2) theoretical study. What theory was 
taught to Elementary Schoolmasters? Sharpe answered that 



"Spectator" on Training 361 

they were lectured on the theory twice a week. Why had 
the Headmasters failed to get men to train in the schools 
themselves? Abbott said there was so much demand that 
the Headmasters could not force the assistants. Hudson 
thought men should not be required to walk in the steps 
pointed out by the professor. Why not have various Lec- 
turers, Headmasters, &c? Abbott said this would be good, 
and this course had been proposed at Oxford, but a pro- 
fessor was also necessary. Abbott also mentioned books 
about education, but did not seem to know much about 
them. He specially praised Stow, 1 but did not know the 
name of his book. Hort said the difficulties were mainly 
practical difficulties. Should the University train or ex- 
amine? Could the Universities train? Where were the 
practising schools ? (Abbott said the elementary schools, but 
was vague.) Heitland said young teachers did not despise 
instruction in the art of teaching as some of the speakers 
had assumed. Oscar Browning spoke next — not much on 
the spot. The Master of St John's (Bateson) referred to 
Scotland, a country from which we may condescend to learn, 
as it is not put out of the pale oceano dissociabili. 

"The meeting was a frightfully unanimous one, not an 
orator in the room was obstructive. Everyone wanted to 
learn what outsiders and schoolmasters could tell them. But 
the whole thing was discussed too much in the lump, and 
with considerable vagueness in consequence." 

Teachers' Examinations 

"4 Aug. 1879, Lucerne. My dear Mr Hutton, I will not 
at present trouble ' the Editor of the Spectator ' with any more 
letters, but I should like to point out privately to the writer 
of the paragraph on Examinations of Teachers in last week's 
Spectator what seems to me a misapprehension of his. He 
evidently thinks that the new examinations are meant to be 
1 The Training System of Education, by David Stow. 



362 R. H. Quick 

tests of teaching power, and he sees that the higher qualities 
of the teacher cannot be tested in this way, so he naturally 
poohpoohs the examinations. But it must have occurred to 
him that in every profession a man's excellence depends on 
the unexaminable part of him, not on the examinable. A 
general of the pre-scientific age told me the other day that 
the absurdity of examinations had been proved at last. Lieut. 
Bromhead, who showed himself such a splendid soldier at 
Rorke's Drift, was a man who had been plucked in his ex- 
amination for his company. Since then poor Lieut. Carey, a 
staff-college man, seems to have lost his head at the critical 
moment. Now there would be obvious inconveniences in 
keeping parties of Zulus to rush down and try to assegai 
men under examination, and till this is done we have no 
means of finding how a man would behave in critical cir- 
cumstances. But, in spite of such excellent authorities as 
my friend the general and the writer of your paragraph, I 
cannot help thinking that examinations may have their uses 
for all that. Examinations secure to some extent at least 
that the teacher has thought about what he is doing and 
why he is doing it; and further, that he knows the best that 
has been thought and done by other people. No doubt this 
thought and knowledge, though it will enable a man to pass 
a good examination, will not make him a good teacher, but 
it will nevertheless be of great use to all teachers, both good 
and bad. The good will be the better for it and the bad 
not quite so bad. As for telling who are the really good 
men, this can be done in the teaching profession, (and in 
every other) only, as your writer says, by fruits, whether the 
fruits be repulsed Zulus or cured patients or gained law- 
suits or well-trained youths. The next time the writer of 
the paragraph has occasion to touch on the subject I hope 
he will admit that examinations may have a raison d'etre, 
though they do not test teaching power. Yours very truly, 
R. H. Q." 



An Examination paper 363 



QUESTIONS FOR EXAMINATION OF TEACHERS 

1. " What meaning do you attach to Non multa sed mul- 
tum ? Discuss its value as a principle for the teacher. 

2 A. How would you cultivate the habit of continuous 
attention in children between eight and ten? What mistakes 
is a teacher likely to make in this matter? 

2 B. How would you endeavour to get, and how to keep 
the attention? 

3. Is it your opinion that if we are ignorant of two sub- 
jects, A and B, we increase or that we decrease our power of 
learning B by learning A? Discuss the question with reference 
to particular subjects. 

4. A School Inspector has spoken of the infants in a 
primary school as ' the fag-end of the first standard.' Show 
that the language is inappropriate. 

5. 'All intellectual teaching is founded on the perception 
of differences.' Discuss this with reference to two subjects of 
your own choosing. 

6. Ordinary teaching is in a great measure taken up with 
establishing habitual sequences or trains of thought. Point 
out some instances in which this is done with good and some 
with bad effect. (24 B 67) 

7. ' Savoir par cceur n'est pas savoir.' (Montaigne.) 
Criticize. 

8. It has been said that a teacher should have thorough 
knowledge of a subject before he is fit to teach the elements. 
Discuss this with reference to : {a) classics, (6) history. 

9. If you took a form of 25 boys in a prepared piece of 
construing, how would you test and give marks for preparation ? 
If the lesson were an hour's lesson, how much time would you 
give for testing each boy ? 

10. If you had to start a class of 25 boys (average age 11) 
in a new language, how should you set to work? Describe 



364 R. H. Quick 

four possible ways, and give reasons in defence of the method 
you would adopt. 

n. If a boy began a new language at 11 years old, at 
what stage would you have him begin to use a dictionary? 
How should he use it? 

12. Describe a model reading lesson of one hour in a 
class of 30 boys who can all read fluently. Name the various 
aims which the teacher will keep in view. 

13. What defects of the mental power are commonly 
spoken of as ' a bad memory ' ? How should the teacher 
endeavour to correct them? 

14. How would you cultivate your pupils' power of ex- 
pression in English, 1st in writing, 2nd in viva voce ? 

15. 'The people that have the best schools will be the 
leading people ; if they do not lead to-day, they will lead to- 
morrow.' Criticize this assertion. 

16. In what way would you begin to teach children 
geography? 

17. Name the manuals of pedagogy that you have 
studied throughout, and in a separate list those you have 
partly read. What are the chief things you have learnt from 
these books? 

18. In the Ecole Modele at Brussels all the lessons last 
f hr., and the children go out to play for the remaining 
quarter. Criticize the plan and compare some others with it. 

19. Describe an ordinary dictation lesson for English. 
Name common defects, and show how these may be reme- 
died. Name some variations that may be made in giving a 
dictation lesson. 

20. How may dictation lessons be given in teaching a 
foreign language ? 

21. Suppose a form of about 12 years old had prepared 
and construed a piece in which were the words ' Graviter 
te castigassem nisi iratus essem,' and books having been 
closed, you were going to question with place-taking. Give 



An Examination paper 365 

ten questions you would ask on the above words. How many 
and what different kinds of questions would you give ? 

22. What are the chief mistakes a teacher is liable to fall 
into about the correction of written work? 

23. Give, by means of examples, different kinds of ques- 
tions which should be asked to practise boys (age 10 — n) in 
the four rules of simple arithmetic. 

24. Describe the kinds of pictures, both with regard to sub- 
ject and treatment of subject, which you would use in teaching 
children of 8 — 10 years old. How would you use these pic- 
tures? What pictures would you use with boys of 13 — 16? 

25. Give some methods of keeping up knowledge of back 
lessons in : (1) Latin, (2) English poetry. 

26. 'Written work, when first done, is the raw material, 
from which knowledge is to be worked up.' Pillans. How 
would you apply this to short answers (written in school) to 
a set of questions on geography? 

27. If you were the master of a boarding-school, how 
would you try to know about and to influence your pupils' 
private reading (reading for themselves) ? 

28. What is tedium? How is it made common in the 
schoolroom? How should it be avoided? 

29. What do you understand by the ' Educational effect of 
games ' ? Discuss the master's action with reference to games. 

30. If you had a class-room to fit up in the best possible 
way, what arrangements should you make about the black- 
board? What use would you make of the black-board in 
giving: (1) a geography lesson? (2) a lesson in Latin gram- 
mar? What inconveniences arise in using the black-board? 

31. Contrast the advantages of giving information viva 
voce and by the text-book. Take first the case of boys of 
fourteen and then of ten years old. 

32. Suppose you had the management of a scholar's 
library for boys under fifteen, name ten books you would 
consider indispensable. 



366 R. H. Quick 

33. ' Knowledge dwells 

In heads replete with thought of other men, 
Wisdom in heads attentive to their own.' 
Discuss this with reference to education. 

34. What do you expect your pupils to learn from 
maps, and how? Point out some common defects in school 
atlases. 

35. If you had to examine by a paper a form that had 
read the first book of Caesar's Commentaries, what are the 
points you would aim at testing by your questions? Give a 
specimen of each class of questions." 

The Cambridge Lectures on Education. Meaning of ' the 
Theory of Education ' 

"11. 4. 82. The Training of Teachers is just now in a 
critical state with us. My own belief is that the current no- 
tions of education are so profoundly false that some years 
must elapse before public opinion is sufficiently enlightened 
to tolerate anything of the kind. The Cambridge scheme 
seems on the point of falling through ; and this is surely 
not to be wondered at. The British public is ignorant and 
indifferent. Many parents look upon the ordinary public 
school course as the natural and inevitable thing for youth, 
just as a milk diet is for infancy. The parent has no con- 
cern in the matter except to pay the school bills. The public, 
then, is quite satisfied. And the great bulk of the teaching 
profession is satisfied also. The ordinary headmaster can see 
little amiss in the system which has produced him. So it is 
only just a few of the most active- minded of our schoolmasters 
who see that things can't remain as they are, and who wish 
therefore to ascertain what changes would be best. When 
neither the public nor the teaching profession at large feel 
the need of any training of teachers, we must not expect 
young men and young women to be before the rest of the 



Cambridge Lectures 367 

world, nor -must we expect a very needy class of people to 
spend money in obtaining qualifications which nobody re- 
quires from them. Still, when a few able, active-minded men 
keep hammering away on the same nail, the said nail does 
show a tendency to intrude, and so at Cambridge and else- 
where they have got people to assent to the proposition that 
'something ought to be done.' As the esprits remnants 
naturally take the lead and seem to speak for others as well 
as themselves, a few of them were considered at Cambridge 
to be ' the headmasters,' and those two or three esprits rem- 
nants in Cambridge succeeded in getting something done ' to 
satisfy the headmasters.' Lecturers were appointed on the 
History, Theory and Practice of Education, each lecturer to 
give fifteen lectures and have done with it unless reappointed 
for another year. The fee was to be ^30 for the fifteen 
lecturers plus students' fees. As I was anxious that a good 
start should be made, I persuaded Fitch and Ward to join 
me in making the first year's courses free to all comers. In 
these circumstances I led off in the October Term of '79 
with an audience varying from 80 to 100, but of these only 
some dozen were men. In the Lent Term Fitch lectured 
with very great success. He had throughout his lectures 
about 100, and there were as many men as women to hear 
him. Ward has a fair number, I believe, but not so many. 
The next year the students had to pay a guinea fee to each 
lecturer, and this destroyed the audience at once. This year, 
when Ward and I have been again lecturing (Ward lectured 
last year on Theory, Daniel on Practice, and Browning on 
History), the audience has been only ten women, and of 
course the whole thing has been pronounced a failure. Very 
likely the Syndicate will not be reappointed, and the Uni- 
versity will give the thing up altogether. The examinations 
may perhaps be carried on without any lectures. The Uni- 
versity of London has established an examination for teachers, 
but only its own graduates are admitted to it. Thus things 



368 R. H. Quick 

stand at present. I have now got a letter from Birmingham 
asking me to advise upon a scheme there. ' What can they 
do for training of teachers ? ' At present people have not 
considered the subject enough to know what a vast amount 
there is to do in it. Dr Ridding banters heavily about 
Cambridge examining in the theory of education and the 
examinations turning out to be examinations in no theory. 
It is very hard to say what he or people in general mean 
by 'theory,' but suppose we take it to mean our conception 
of what the educator has to effect. This conception is two- 
fold : first a conception of what the young ought to become, 
secondly of the share which the educator has in bringing 
this about. On both points there is at present much un- 
certainty in our minds. We all have some notions which 
are mostly the traditional notions of the class to which we 
belong, and these notions, however vague they may be, we 
never try to clear up by study or earnest thought. Indeed, 
many people think it safer to have nothing but the vague 
traditional theory. If we try to form any clear conception 
of what we want the young to become and of the share edu- 
cation has in forming them, we shall be getting theoretical 
and shall be likely to leave the high road and be lost in 
some neighbouring bog. And this fear is not quite so ab- 
surd as it at first appears. Take a simple case. The ele- 
mentary schoolmaster's theory is supplied to him from ' My 
Lords ' in the Code. He is told that his pupils must be 
brought up to ' pass ' in the three R's. He accepts the 
theory and goes to work accordingly. But supposing this 
theory does not satisfy him : suppose he thinks out what a 
boy of twelve should be and how his previous training bears 
on this : suppose he finds that he should be truth- telling, 
generous-hearted, should have his will disciplined to do his 
duty without supervision, his intelligence trained to think 
and think rightly about what he is doing, his eyes trained 
to observe accurately, and his hands to work handily. If 



Ridding on Training 369 

the schoolmaster gets any such notions as these, he may set 
to work to produce different results to the results demanded 
by the Code, and possibly he may have some success ac- 
cording to his theory, but fail according to the theory of 
Whitehall. Dr Ridding has said in his letter to O. Browning 
that a young master does not want theory; that is settled for 
him in the system of the school to which he becomes at- 
tached. Here of course Dr Ridding has a somewhat dif- 
ferent conception of ' theory ' to mine. He means rather 
conception of what to do than of what the outcome should 
be. It is obvious that the young teacher must accept the 
established system and not attempt innovation. Here of 
course Dr Ridding and I are entirely at one. But though 
a young master must accept all he finds, I don't think it 
should be on the ' Open your mouth and shut your eyes ' 
principle advocated by Dr Ridding. If he is not at first to 
trouble himself about school theory, in other words, if he is 
not to think what education ought to do or what is the ten- 
dency of the system he is engaged in, he will probably soon 
get accustomed to routine and lose his eyesight as horses 
do when they work in the dark. I agree with Dr Ridding 
that young masters do not want theory to tell them what to 
do, but they want it to tell them why. A young surgeon 
might be guilty of manslaughter if his theory led him to try 
treatment of his own devising ; but I suppose none of the 
eminent men in the profession would adopt the same line 
as Ridding and say, 'The young practitioner does not want 
theory. Let him dose his patient in the usual way and ask 
no questions.' Still I admit that the mere rule of thumb 
is sometimes safer than the man who seeks a theory. A 
thinking blockhead is far more mischievous than a block- 
head who lets others think for him ; and even an intelligent 
man, when he has determined the right end, may not hit on 
the right means. So there is perhaps some justification for 
the English dread of people who are ' too theoretical.' " 

2B 



370 R. H. Quick 



Dr Ridding on the Training of Teachers 

"12 April, '82. There is much wisdom, or at least 
prudence, shown in Dr Bidding's letter to Oscar Browning. 1 
If you wish to be aggressive with safety you should be very 
careful in choosing the object of your attack. Should you 
sally out and kick a small boy you run little risk as far as the 
small boy himself is concerned. But the boy may chance to 
have a navvy for his father and the father may appear upon 
the scene and return the kick with interest. It is much better 
to stuff a Guy which you may kick about to your heart's 
content. The worst that can happen to you is that your 
neighbours may look on somewhat contemptuously. Ridding 
has great aptitude for the construction of Guys, and when he 
has provided himself with these adversaries he shews them no 
mercy. Here are some specimens of them. l The Theory 
of Education is to be the panacea for the schoolmaster's 
failures' (Letter, p. 9). Here is another: 'Examination in 
a theory of education is a training for teachers superior or 
equal to practical acquaintance' (p. 12). Here is perhaps the 
best of the lot : ' Do not let us lay the flattering unction to our 
souls that an examination of aspirant teachers in the History 
and Theory of Education will furnish the panacea for all the 
pains of our ' bad quarters of hours ' or give the training 
needed to regenerate the Educator of the Future' (p. 14). 
This is what Ridding exhorts us not to believe. Did anybody 
in his senses ever believe it? And here is a specimen of the 
truths of which he makes himself the champion and assumes 
that his adversaries deny. ' The evils expected to be remedied 
will not be remedied. Differences will remain between good 

1 * Examination in Theory v. Normal Schools as the Training for 
Teachers.' A Letter to Oscar Browning, M.A., Fellow of King's College, 
Cambridge, by the Rev. George Ridding, D.D., Headmaster of Winchester 
College. Winchester, 1882. 



Letter to Mac Car thy 371 

and bad teachers, clever and dull ones ; differences in vitality, 
vivacity, sympathy, resource; differences in temper and 
patience ; differences in knowledge.' Why doesn't he go on — - 
All your vaunted theory will never seriously affect the multipli- 
cation table, and in spite of all your assertions I maintain that 
read what books you may there will srill be more daylight in 
June than in December." 



Letter to Mr Mac Car thy on Training Teachers 

"15 April, '82. I have written a letter to MacCarthy in 
which I maintain that not only do we want professors of 
education, but that the field of labour is so great that it should 
be divided among several labourers. ' First we want men of 
insight to examine into the true theory of education — that is, 
as I understand it, to inquire what human beings ought to 
become and how much of this may be effected by educa- 
tion. . . . Next we want men who will make it their business 
to find out what course education is taking on the Continent 
and in the United States (General Bureau of Education — some 
account of it). Some people say, What matters to us the 
experience of the Continent or the United States? Their 
system of education may be good for the Germans or the 
Yankees, but the conditions of life are different abroad, so 
they want a different system. But in point of fact the con- 
ditions of life are different here to what they were when our 
present system of education took its present shape. When I 
went to Cambridge 30 years ago the classical and mathematical 
triposes were supreme. Since then everything has been upset, 
including these triposes themselves, by the incursions of new 
knowledge. What has happened in superior education will 
happen in school education too. Frederic Harrison has been 
shewing in the current number of the Fortnightly Review how 
all the conditions of life have changed more in the last hundred 



37 2 R. H. Quick 

years than in a thousand years previously. In times of changes 
like these we need men with brains and knowledge to examine 
what changes are going on and to shew how education may be 
adapted to meet these changes. If we will not observe the 
course of things in other countries we shall have to follow up 
in the rear and learn in the most expensive way possible — 
by our blundering. 

" ' But besides needing men to think and men to turn the 
experience of other nations to our profit, we want men to shew 
us how best to do what we are now trying to do. Young teachers 
may have an immense deal done for them by any skilful 
teacher who will take pains with them at starting. Dr Ridding 
thinks that lectures are no substitute for experience, except in 
the case of non-university men or feeble university men. / 
don't think they are a substitute for experience in any case 
whatever. But an instructor of teachers may shew them how 
they may profit by their experience. With his advice they 
may get to observe properly and to be conscious of their own 
defects. It is one of the greatest mistakes in the world to 
suppose that all practice makes perfect ; it is only right 
practice that does this ; wrong practice may be worse than 
none. The young teacher's danger is lest he should settle 
down into a groove of wrong practice which will soon make 
his work easy to him, but will prevent his improving. A 
capable man put in charge of young teachers, acquainting him- 
self with their objects and efforts, and at times seeing them 
teach may do an immense deal for them.' So far I have 
quoted my letter to MacCarthy. I think a professor or in- 
structor of teachers, normal master or whatever you choose to 
call him, might undertake to instruct a number of young men 
and women teachers. He should have free access to the class- 
rooms in which they teach and should visit their rooms and be 
present at an actual lesson as often as possible. He should 
find out by private questioning what the teacher is trying to 
do. He should (of course in private) point out where 



Objections refuted 373 

improvement is needed. He should get for his students op- 
portunities of seeing good teaching. He should sometimes 
lecture to them, at others have a discussion class to which the 
students should bring short papers to read on some set subject, 
and these papers should be criticized by fellow-students and 
the professor." 

A Proposed Chair of Education in Mason College, 
Birmingham 

" 13 May, '82. Mr G. Dixon has forwarded me objections 
to the establishment of a Chair of Education in the Mason 
Science College, advanced by some of the masters of secondary 
schools. Objection 1 is that there is no agreement about 
principles, so whatever the professor taught would be con- 
demned by some acting teacher. No. 2, the new professor 
would be a ' theorist,' not a practical man or experienced 
schoolmaster. No. 3, the professor would want to attend 
classes in secondary schools, and this the headmaster would 
not like, as it would interfere with order and discipline. 

" Now all this comes to a cry from established ' school- 
masters, ' Let us alone ! ' There is no agreement among 
schoolmasters : this is true enough, and what is the inference to 
be drawn from it ? Not surely that one principle is as good as 
another, and that each man should go his own way without 
question. 

" There was a time when there was less diversity of opinion 
than now. 'Education,' said Dr Johnson, 'is as well known 
and has long been as well known as ever it can be.' When 
one thinks of these words one sees the tremendous change 
that has come to pass since then. Chaos has come again, or 
rather what was taken for solid rock has proved mere quick- 
sand, and it is now an open question with English teachers 
what are educational principles, or whether such principles can 
exist. But this chaos must be very injurious to their pupils. 



374 R- H- Quick 

Principles of education, I suppose, are truths of human nature 
which point to particular practices in education. If we can 
get principles established they will be of immense value to us. 
There are no doubt a great many teachers who have sham 
principles or no principles at all, and if the professor can lay 
down true principles these will, of course, be rejected by 
masters who have got into a groove of error. But if nobody is 
to teach truth till everyone is prepared to welcome it, there is 
small chance of improvement in any department of art or 
science. But the professor may teach error. No doubt he 
may. Some physical sciences have an established body of 
truths which every professor knows and teaches. This is not 
so in education, but in this respect education does not stand 
alone. Even in medicine, though it rests on the physical 
sciences, very little is established beyond dispute. The theory 
and practice of the doctors of to-day differ very widely indeed 
from those of the doctors 70 or 80 years ago. Possibly as 
the doctors now think their predecessors were in error, so the 
doctors of the future may think our doctors in error. But 
nobody contends that each practitioner should dose his patients 
in his own way because the heads of the profession may be in 
error. What is felt is that every doctor is bound to know the 
best that is already known or at least thought, and that if the 
country practitioner makes mistakes through following the 
teaching of men like Jenner and Gull, he would make fifty 
times worse mistakes if he refused to learn from them and set 
about inventing his own system or dosed away without system 
of any kind. Of course if the professor of education is a 
blockhead and does not know or does not teach what is held 
by the best authorities, he may do simply harm, but this is true 
of professors on every subject. But the scheme of the pro- 
fessorship supposes the professor to be an able man, who has 
made a thorough study of such thought about education as the 
human race has already accumulated, and besides has a know- 
ledge of the best practice both in this country and the other 



Objections refuted 375 

main countries of Europe. It is neither more nor less than 
throwing up all hopes of improvement to say that such a man 
can do nothing to save teachers from false principles or no 
principles, and to establish true principles which may by 
degrees bring the right order into our present chaos. 

" To consider the second objection, that the professor will be 
a ' theorist.' The general notion, so far as I have been able 
to discover it, is this : teaching is an art ; an art can be learnt 
only by practice, so the theorist, the person who talks about 
the art without perhaps being able to do anything, is worse 
than useless. In reply to this, I should point out that bearing 
on every art there are two kinds of knowledge : First, there is 
the knowledge of the principles which underlie the art. 
Secondly, there is the knowledge of the best methods of 
practice. These two kinds of knowledge should be very care- 
fully distinguished. When people talk about theory they 
generally mean the knowledge of underlying principles, though 
sometimes they confuse with this another meaning of the 
word, according to which theory is merely hypothesis or con- 
jectural explanation of phenomena. But taking theory in the 
proper sense of the word, it is obvious that when an art is 
quite settled, theory may give little practical advantage to 
those engaged in it : e.g. nobody would play the violin better 
for knowing the theory of harmonics, or would swim or row 
better for having made a study of the laws of fluid pressure. 
But the art of teaching is not so simple or so settled. The 
practice of schoolmasters differs very widely indeed, and in 
determining between different possible modes of action an 
appeal to principles may enable us to determine the right 
practice. I am absolutely certain that if English teachers had 
ever thought of principles many school books which have 
had or have a great vogue would never have been tolerated 
in any school-room. So the professor must be a theorist in 
this sense that he has studied principles and knows how far 
the principles of school teaching have been settled by the 
great thinkers. 



376 ^?. H. Quick 

" But the knowledge given by the professor would not be 
knowledge of principles only. He would have made a study 
of the best methods of practice. To teach an art something 
very different is required from skill in practising the art. We 
have all great skill in speaking English, but if we were suddenly 
set to teach a foreigner, we should not know how to go to 
work. We do not know how we learnt, and so we cannot direct 
the learning of others. In other things when we do remember 
how we were taught, we do our best to put the pupil through a 
similar course. But this remembrance, though much better 
than nothing, is not enough to set the young teacher on the 
best practice for him. It is different in two ways : First, it is 
a remembrance of one way only, and that perhaps not the best. 
Secondly, it is a very imperfect remembrance ; for in learning 
an art, say riding or drawing, our mind is engaged in under- 
standing and carrying out the directions of the master, and we 
do not observe the sequence of those directions, and of course 
do not remember it. And yet everything depends on the 
sequence. The young teacher then requires to be instructed 
by someone who has thoroughly studied the method in which 
the exercises should be conducted and the order in which they 
should come. Experienced and skilful teachers often know 
this by a kind of habit which has become their second nature, 
but they may not have any notion how to direct others in the 
art. The objections assume that the professor would not be 
an experienced teacher. I think he should have had experi- 
ence in the school-room, but experience is not the only thing 
wanted. Besides being able to practise the art himself, he 
must know how to direct the practice of others." 

Psychology and Training of Teachers 

" 2 April, '84. Courthope Bowen and others (myself 
among them), are too apt to say, ' You must thoroughly under- 
stand the being on whom you are to act and then your work 



Psychology 377 

will have a scientific character.' To this it may be fairly 
answered, We cannot in our present state of knowledge under- 
stand scientifically the being we have to act on. The doctors 
even do not know much about what goes on in his body, 
though as they can cut him up after death and examine his 
body they know what the body is. We teachers know much 
less about what goes on in his mind and as we have no chance 
of post-mortems we can't find out what his mind is. So our 
only approach to science must be by way of experiment, and 
as yet very little has been satisfactorily settled. By all means 
let us go on observing and experimenting, but young teachers 
cannot be allowed to try fresh experiments. By reading books 
such as Bain's Education as a Science I can't fancy any 
teacher would be much the better. A good book on the sub- 
ject (Sully's Psychology, just out, looks to me promising) 
would very much alter a teacher's attitude of mind with refer- 
ence to his work, that is, in his thinking hours. When he is 
at work in the school-room he would very likely forget all 
about psychology. From whatever cause (ignorance most 
likely) I have got little light from psychology on actual 
teaching." 

Cockiness of the Inexperienced 

" ' A poor thing, but my own,' may be a wise feeling when 
we have done our best and the thing cannot be improved, but 
it is mischievous if we take a pride in things simply as ours 
when we ought to change them or at least try to improve them. 

" My little daughter, who is just two years old, seems to 
have a touch of the latter feeling already. When her mother 
shows her how to hold something she will take it sometimes 
another way and say, '/do it dis way.' One laughs at this in 
a child, but it is no laughing matter in a man. Yet young 
teachers don't seem to have the least suspicion that their way 
is not quite so likely to be the right way as the way recom- 



3>j8 R. H. Quick 

mended by those who have been trying to find the right way 
for many years. 

" I was lately in the company of a set of young masters, very 
good fellows, who took an interest in their work, but it did not 
seem to have occurred to them that they could possibly have 
anything to learn about it. I mentioned a good way of setting 
' lines ' so as to avoid injuring the handwriting, but not one 
of them would listen more than civility required. Like Dora 
each said, ' I do it this way,' and didn't seem to think that any 
improvement was desirable or even possible." 

The Historical Theory of Education 

"6 Aug. '85. In the preface to Polack's Brosamen (a 
German schoolmaster's Reminiscences, just sent me by Mr 
Hope Moncrieff) I read : — 

" l Was du ererbt von deinen Vatern hast 
Erwirb es, um es zu besitzen ! 1 

" ' Die geistige Erbschaft tritt sich also schwerer an als die 
klingende. Und doch beruht auf diesem Erbprozess die 
Zukunft der Menschheit. Verschmahen wir dies Erbe, und 
will jeder von vorn anfangen, dann werden wir iiber Adams 
Kultur nicht weit hinauskommen. Die menschliche Kultur ist 
ein historisches Produkt. Ihr stetiges Wachstum liegt in der 
treuen Verwertung des geistigen Erbes unserer Vorfahren.' 1 

" This is all sensible, but we must bear in mind that to start 
afresh, whether we wish it or not, is absolutely impossible. If 

' What from thy fathers thou inheritest 
Win for thyself to make it truly thine.' 

'Intellectual property, if we are to believe Goethe, cannot be handed 
down so easily as pounds, shillings and pence. And yet on this trans- 
mission depends the future of the human race. If we despise this legacy 
and determine each of us to make a fresh start, we shall not get much 
beyond Adam's stage of civilization. Civilization is an historical product. 
It depends for steady growth on the faithful employment of the intellectual 
patrimony bequeathed to us by our ancestors.' 



The claims of tradition 379 

we go on in the happy-go-lucky fashion of English school- 
masters, we inherit and pass on a number of practices which 
have often owed their origin to mere accident and many of 
which fresh circumstances have rendered inexpedient : e.g. when 
no literature was studied and little literature existed save that 
of Greece and Rome, it may have been well to spend much of a 
boy's early years over abnormal inflections of Greek nouns and 
verbs, but when the study of other things virtually supplanted 
in many cases the study of Greek for all but a few scholars, 
the old practice of grinding away at abnormal Greek inflections 
became a tradition that could give no rational account of itself. 
This is a gross case, but it shows the sort of thing I mean. 
Well, then, we must receive an Erbschaft. Shall we take to it 
intelligently or unintelligently? Most English schoolmasters 
answer by their deeds if not by their words, ' Unintelligently ; if 
once you begin to examine into the meaning and object of 
what you do, you get theoretical and moony ; you are tempted 
to try experiments and are sure to make mistakes. Just do 
what others have done before you. They have got on well 
enough, and you may be satisfied to do as well as they did.' 
But this recommendation cannot now be so easily carried out, 
for now the supremacy of the classics has passed away the 
tradition of the classical teachers cannot be carried on in its 
entirety. So we want someone to guide young teachers. It is 
true they cannot well criticize to much purpose till they have 
had some experience, and unfortunately they generally get so 
overworked at first that they have no time to look at anything 
till use and wont has blinded their eyes. We shall never get 
good teachers till their work is made light at first and they 
carry it on under intelligent supervision." 

The Products of Untrained Teachers 

" 22. 8. 85. I have just spent half-an-hour in examining 
young P., a lad of fourteen, whom I examined two years ago. 



380 R. H. Quick 

He has been over two years at the Grammar-school. In 
Latin he had done parts of Caesar, book r., but he could 
not find anything he could construe to me when I handed him 
the book. I gave him ' In Britannia pericula dominorum non 
sunt tanta quanta in Hibernia.' This completely stumped him. 
He could not make out dominorum, and said it could be no 
part of dominus. In arithmetic he had been ' up to practice ' 
and had done all practice and decimals, and last quarter he 
came out second in his division. But when I tried him he 
asserted ^0.25 to be ^25 and then 25J. I asked him to give 
me a multiple of 10 and he answered 2, and then declared that 
10 had no multiple. I wrote down 'y 3 ^ and T , which is the 
greater?' After long hesitation, he decided T . ' How much 
greater?' I asked. This made him doubt whether his answer 
was right, so he corrected himself to y 3 ^. 

" The explanation of this fiasco is simple. A young Oxford 
man is good at gymnastics ; he is therefore engaged here as 
gymnasiarch, but by the terms of the agreement he has also to 
take some of the mathematics. Nobody seems to have asked 
if he knew anything, and nobody supposed that he had any 
preparation for teaching. In these circumstances he is handed 
over a number of boys to do what he likes with. Apparently 
there has never been any attempt made to give the boys any 
arithmetical conception or to see if they have any." 

A Letter to S. H. Butcher 

"29. 1. 86. I am just answering a letter of Prof. S. H. 
Butcher. I say that for training three things are needed. The 
student teacher should 

" 1. See good teaching and school management. (Even 
seeing a variety of poor teaching and management would be 
useful.) 

" 2. Do some teaching himself under the direction and 
supervision of a good instructor. 



Teaching like other arts 381 

" 3. Study books on education and teaching, riot necessarily 
for examination, but for the light they may throw on his work. 

" N.B. He must have time for study and observation, so he 
can't earn anything." 

A Sermon on a Text from De Quincey 

" ' Without an art, without some simple system of rules, 
gathered from experience of such contingencies as are most 
likely to mislead the practice when left to its own guidance, no 
act of man nor effort accomplishes its purposes in perfection.' 
. . . ' A limited process submits readily to the limits of a 
technical system ; but a process so unlimited as the inter- 
change of thought seems to reject them.' — De Quincey on 
Conversation. 

" The art of teaching is, as I believe, an art which has this 
in common with most others, that he who would learn it can- 
not learn it from rules, and at the same time cannot learn it 
in advantageous conditions without rules. Of course it is no 
small matter that can be reduced to a technical system. 
There are some games so simple that with a little good instruc- 
tion anyone may become a proficient. Do this and do that 
and results so and so must follow. But games of this kind 
are very poor things. All the higher games are found to have 
a certain mechanical part for which rules and coaching are 
useful, if not essential, but the higher developments are alto- 
gether above rule. Yes, but these higher developments, though 
not reducible to rule like the mechanical part, may be impeded 
by faults of mechanism that have come from neglect of rule. 

" W. P. S., with whom I have been staying, says that 
training would get teachers into a groove, and that the man 
who has to find his own way of doing things finds the best way 
for him. If this is so, teaching is the only art in which no 
advance is possible, and accumulated experience is valueless. 
I do not know why the originality of the teacher should be 



1 



382 R. H. Quick 

considered either more precious or more delicate than the 
originality of those who practise other arts. A groove is, I take 
it, a fixed course of procedure. Now in the early stages of an 
art, when the mechanical part is being acquired, we want a 
certain fixed course, and if we leave the learner alone he will 
to a certainty get into a fixed course or groove, and that a bad 
one. Suppose we find that a young person has a great talent 
for music. Do we give him a musical instrument and keep 
instruction from him for fear of spoiling his originality and 
getting him into a groove? By no means. Even the greatest 
geniuses need instruction from masters who will give them the 
rules drawn from the experience of many generations. It is 
quite true that the tradition may have got to some extent 
divorced from fact, and the genius may in the end have to 
depart from it. The Pre-Raphaelite movement was a protest 
against wrong tradition. But the P.-R. brothers had to walk 
for a time in the traditional road, and so must all beginners. 
The notion that the young teacher alone should learn nothing 
from tradition seems to me absurd. He cannot at first find his 
own way, so he must fall back on the very defective tradition 
of what he remembers when he was a boy. A really able man 
with no guidance but this may in the end make a very good 
teacher, but even he will probably never be so good as he 
might have been with more advantages. I know a man who 
never learnt the piano, but by natural ability and great industry 
has got to play classical music. Musicians who watch his 
fingering ' stare and gasp,' and consider the way in which he 
masters the difficulties that arise from his ignorance of the 
proper method truly admirable, but after all these difficulties 
would never have existed if he had had proper instruction, 
and thus the same amount of ability and energy would have 
made him a far better player than he can now by any possi- 
bility become. 

" ' In my own early years having been formed by nature too 
exclusively and morbidly for solitary thinking, I observed 



Teaching like other arts 383 

nothing. Seeming to have eyes, in reality I saw nothing. But 
it is a matter of no very uncommon experience that, whilst the 
mere observers never become meditators, the mere meditators, 
on the other hand, may finally ripen into close observers. 
Strength of thinking, through long years, upon innumerable 
themes, will have the effect of disclosing a vast variety of 
questions, to which it soon becomes apparent that answers are 
lurking up and down the whole field of daily experience, and 
thus an internal experience which was slighted in youth, 
because it was a dark cipher that could be read into no mean- 
ing, a key that answered to no lock, gradually becomes 
interesting as it is found to yield one solution after another to 
problems that have independently matured in the mind.' — De 
Quincey. 

" This bears on a most interesting question, What are the 
conditions necessary to render experience instructive? People 
say, ' Turn your young master into the schoolroom and 
experience will teach him.' Will teach him what ? It will 
certainly teach him to get through his work somehow ; but it 
will not teach him the best way, and moreover he will 
have no eye for some of the most valuable lessons his experi- 
ence puts before him. Most people think experience will open 
a man's eyes. It will do nothing of the kind. Its tendency is 
rather to close the eyes of the mind than to open them. 
Experience often forces us into a groove — the direction of least 
resistance ; and when we are accustomed to that we go along 
blindly. It is, as De Quincey says, thinking that opens our 
eyes, and the pressure of school work gives no spare time or 
energy for thought. A preliminary survey of the field, given 
in lectures or books, might perhaps give the young master a 
notion of the things he should observe. ' But this would make 
him too theoretical.' There must be some meaning, in this 
common cry. I think it is supposed that having been taught 
a theory he would not try to learn from facts. But instead of 
having learnt 'a theory,' he may simply have had his mind 



384 R> H. Quick 

opened to investigate the bearing of facts. If he has simply 
got some 'views ' from his instructors, his learning has been a 
failure ; but if he has learned to think and has had pointed 
out to him what he should think about, his learning may have 
started him in the path of endless improvement. At the same 
time I am not quite certain about such previous instruction. 
Previous to experience much of it would be uninteresting, if 
not unintelligible." 

The Seamy Side of Training 

" 7 Dec. '86. Yesterday morning I addressed the students, 
sixteen in number, with Miss Hughes and Miss Freeman, 
at the Cambridge Training College, now at Newnham Crofts. 

" Miss Hughes told of an instance of wrong kind of train- 
ing. A trained mistress treated some small fault very harshly 
and when taken to task by the headmistress said the offence 
came under ' case so and so,' and this she had dealt with as 
directed." 

A Criticism Lesson 

" 28 March, '87. To-day I was at the Maria Grey Train- 
ing School, 1, Fitzroy Square. The lessons (half-hour) had 
been carefully prepared and the notes of the one I saw (on 
climate) were very good in most ways, but had far too much in 
them for a single lesson. The second was on multiplication of 
fractions. The teacher (Miss Priestley) wrote fast and beauti- 
fully on the blackboard (a great accomplishment in a teacher). 
Her weakness was that little was got out of the girls. She also 
attempted far too much. I did not think the criticism of Miss 
W. and Canon D. all that I should have expected. Miss P. 
did not attempt to ascertain what the class already knew, and 
she accepted words such as numerator and denominator with- 
out asking their meaning." 



Nature and Nurture 385 



' The cunnirC d 1 V 

" 12. 1. 90. There is an article in last night's Globe headed 
'The Fisher's Cunning.' It tells a story of a man who was 
considered a tolerable fisherman with the fly, but when he 
went out fishing with an old poacher he found the poacher 
caught fish after fish, when he could not get a rise. It was in 
vain the poacher tried to teach him. Beyond a certain point 
the teaching was no good, and the poacher said at last, ' Ah, 
Sir, I canna tell ye ony mair — ye ha' na' got the cunnin' o' 't.' 
In most things, especially in teaching, where heart and mind 
have to control and influence heart and mind, there will be 
some who have the cunning of it and some who have not. 
On what does the difference depend? In the poacher's case 
we have the keenest delight in the pursuit, the keenest desire 
for excellence, traditional knowledge probably, and under these 
conditions years and years of practice. How far must natural 
talent come in? If the poacher had in early life shown no 
aptitude for the business he would probably have given it up ; 
but natural aptitude brings no amateur up to the standard of a 
good professional ; and when circumstances lead a man into a 
pursuit as a professional, whether it be billiards or racquets or 
poaching, he does not often fail for want of natural aptitude. 

" Why is the standard of excellence so low among even pro- 
fessional teachers ? It is, I think, because they will not take 
pains enough. Except practice they are without the qualifica- 
tions which lead to the poacher's excellence, intense delight in 
the occupation, intense desire for success in it. When these 
things are absent, practice more often prevents excellence than 
leads to it. Excellence, I think, is usually obtainable by people 
with fair natural gifts who devote themselves for years to an 
earnest effort to excel. But there is an excellence beyond this 
which wants an additional element, viz. genius. No amount 
of effort would make a man an orator like Bright, nor an 

2C 



386 R. H. Quick 

animal painter like Landseer. The element of genius we may 
leave out of account. It is very rare and seems to set ordinary 
rules at defiance." 



Mr C. S. Roundett on the Cambridge Teachers' Examination 

" Mr Sully, in his Outlines of Psychology, postulates for 
teachers practice and theory ; the College of Preceptors insists 
on theory, leaving training to a more convenient season ; Mr 
C. S. Roundell exalts practice, and pooh-poohs theory alto- 
gether. At a prize distribution of the College of Preceptors, 
he is reported to have said : ' What we require in the method 
of testing the efficiency of teachers is not so much the theory 
or science of education as the practical knowledge of the way 
to go to work properly in handling classes. ... I will take the 
first question in each of the first two papers of the Cambridge 
Syndicate. ' Enumerate the chief conditions, psychological and 
physiological, of retentiveness.' I could not for the life of me 
answer the question if you gave me a week in which to do it, 
and if I could I do not see that either I or anyone would be 
a bit the better for it. They go on to say, 'What do you 
understand by cramming?' We all know what we understand 
by cramming, and I cannot see the object of putting such a 
question as that. I take this as a sample of the mischief of 
dwelling so much upon these metaphysics, these psychological 
and physiological difficulties, instead of going to the backbone 
of the whole thing, the proper knowledge of the handling of 
classes.' 

" As it is the idea in the examiners' minds that Mr Roundell 
feels bound to criticise, we should inquire what that idea is. 
They think perhaps that they must examine in the prescribed 
subject and in no other. Even if an examination in the theory 
or science of education is as useless as Mr Roundell supposes, 
it is surely hard on the examiners to find fault with them for 
setting questions in it when the University has engaged them to 



Training of Inspectors 387 

do so. What would Mr Roundell have them ask? He selects 
two questions and objects to one on the ground that he could 
not answer it, and to the other on the ground that he could." 

Training of H. M. Inspectors 

" 22. 2. 79. Last night Mr Rathbone, the member for 
Liverpool, brought forward a motion on the subject of inspec- 
tors. He said inspectors now-a-days had no training for their 
calling, and he proposed that they should serve a kind of 
apprenticeship under senior inspectors. They might be ap- 
pointed a year or two before they would be required to inspect 
independently, and by seeing inspection they might get to 
know the sort of standard adopted and the best modes of 
inspection. Several speakers, Mr Forster among them, urged 
the necessity of some training of inspectors. Then happened 
one of those marvellous incidents which prove Goethe's asser- 
tion : ' Der Englander ist eigentlich ohne Intelligenz.' Lord 
G. Hamilton got up and said such a scheme as Mr Rathbone's 
could not be entertained. The cost of education was too 
great already. We were spending over ^2,000,000 a year, and 
in such a state of things no proposal could even be considered 
which would involve an outlay of at least ^2000 a year more. 
Besides, it was wrong to say the inspectors had no training. 
They w6re required to receive some sort of instruction for at 
least a fortnight (!). After this 'explanation' from the 
Minister, Mr Rathbone did not divide the House." 

Practising Schools 

" If you took a valuable watch to be mended and the 
watchmaker said, ' I'll hand it over to my apprentices, I find 
mending watches capital practice for my apprentices and in 
time they become skilled workmen,' you would probably 
object and say, ' It may be a good thing for the apprentices, 
but not a good thing for the watches, and after all we must 
take the watches into account.' " 



388 R. H. Quick 

LANGUAGE 

Conscious and Unconscious Language Learning 

" There are two different methods of picking up a language, 
the conscious and the unconscious. Children, of course, 
learn entirely after the latter. Prendergast says they are 
wonderfully successful, and that therefore all learners should 
try to learn in the same way. It must be remembered, how- 
ever, that learning a language is the main employment of 
children's lives, and that grown people cannot bestow the same 
amount of time and attention to it. Moreover, a child's mind 
is a vacuum which naturally sucks in such knowledge as the 
child feels the want of. The conditions are so different that 
we cannot infer from the child's success the possibility of the 
older pupil succeeding in the same way. The adult, on the 
other hand, has certain faculties which the child has not. The 
conscious method makes use of these faculties and requires 
the learner to do by mental effort what the child does instinc- 
tively. The child unconsciously observes and uses the analo- 
gies of the language. These analogies are pointed out to the 
older pupil, and he is required to apply them consciously. 
Still no portion of a language can be said to have been 
mastered till the pupil can use that portion unconsciously and 
without mental effort of any kind. Our ordinary schoolboy 
never acquires any mastery over even the commonest portion 
of the Latin language, so that Latin never is to him a direct 
means of receiving thought, still less of expressing it, but the 
words remain to him a kind of cipher which conceals the 
author's meaning till the decipherer ferrets it out by the appli- 
cation of certain rules. Schoolmasters say truly that the 
application of these rules is good mental discipline ; but the 
fact is the average boy will not apply them. It is too much 



Composition 389 

trouble, so the youngsters take shots like the unfortunate 
translator of triste lupus in Tom Brown, and spend a great deal 
of time upon Latin without ever learning it. The ordinary 
method is to ascend through vague ideas about a great many 
words, and through a conscious application of rules and 
analogies to a state in which the ordinary words of the 
language are known precisely and intuitively, and the main 
part of the language becomes a medium for the direct com- 
munication of ideas. Prendergast's method is to make the 
pupil enter on this last stage from the very commencement. 
This can be done by obtaining the mastery over a small 
fraction of the language and gradually adding to the province 
thus mastered." 

Arnold's First French Book 

" What absurd notions people have of i First Books ' ! 
Here is a First French Book for children, and I, a man who 
has spent some years in teaching language, who knows a 
certain amount of French and has spent some time in a 
French family, find these exercises here and there puzzling, 
and on the whole well suited to my present state of know- 
ledge ! 

" My own experience makes me think that nothing is done 
carefully by boys unless they know that it will be immediately 
looked over carefully by the master. Exercises are generally 
considered too much as a convenient way of keeping boys 
employed out of school. There is no time allotted to them in 
school at all, but the only real way to teach from them would 
be to look through a set of exercises, observe all the chief 
mistakes, explain about them to the form, and for or with the 
next exercise give some sentences that would test whether the 
explanations have been understood. But for all this there is 
no ti?ne. One feels one must get on somehow, and the con- 
sequence is that if ever one sets a back exercise, one finds 



390 R. H. Quick 

nearly as many mistakes made in it as the first time ; in other 
words the boys have learned little or nothing from their 
exercises." 

Learning French. A Personal Experience 
17 Nov. '69. 64 Rue Perronet, Neuilly 

" I came here yesterday, sent here by Mme. Pressens£, to 
whom I had been sent by Butler. 

" As to French, I don't find that I can start talking it at all, 
though I can understand a little. I don't think that Prender- 
gast's book has given one at all the knowledge that the time 
spent in other ways would have done. I attribute this to the 
badness of the book rather than to the method. If there were 
any analysis of constructions on which the sentences were 
based, and if whole verbs were given instead of scraps, I think 
I should have learnt much more. 

" Learning by heart. I have to-day set to work learning 
by heart Lamartine's lines beginning 

' Ainsi toujours pousses vers de nouveaux rivages.' 

" I believe I gave at least an hour a verse to it, and yet 
though I can say four or five verses slowly and with thought, 
I can't get it to run naturally at all. I learn by the sense and 
I have to think ahead. The words don't flow of their own 
accord ; I can't make them ; though as for the first stanza I 
have said it without book at least thirty times. There are 
two things which my mind retains : First, the sense ; second, 
the image of the word which was received by the eye. The 
ear is not helpful in the least, although I have from the 
beginning read the piece aloud. So completely does my ear 
seem useless in the matter that when Madame Lalot read some 
verses which I could have said myself the sound conveyed no 
meaning to me. 



A personal experience 391 

" Nov. 20. Here as usual one sees how not to do it 
Donkin, who has been here nine months, can just make him- 
self understood in English- French, the accent utterly bad. He 
seems to understand what is said and this is his sole acquire- 
ment. Every morning he does a dicte which is corrected by 
M. Lalot ; he afterwards copies it, and there an end. In a 
page of writing he will have about twenty faults, in fact he 
does not seem to have any notion whatever of the written 
language and these dictes are waste of time to him, as he never 
examines the mistakes after they are corrected and the copy 
made. I see more and more the need of going again and 
again over the same ground, and people like M. Lalot do not 
seem to see it at all. 

" Another thing one sees by trial is the foolishness of gram- 
matical subtilties at starting. M. Lalot gives me a grammar, 
and before I know the verbs or the ordinary rules for gender 
wants me to get up such precious pieces of information as that 
hymne is feminine as a church song and masculine as a war 
song. These trifles interest people who know the language, 
and so they force them on people who don't know the 
language. L. wants me to spend time and labour on getting 
up such minutiae as when to write les Cesar and when les 
Cesars. Nothing could be more stupid. When one is toler- 
ably at home in the language such niceties may be profitable, 
but they are not at first, and at the best are quite unimportant 
for a stranger. Yet such is the perversity of teachers that 
when they speak of ' grammar,' they almost always mean such 
things as these. 

" No doubt one of the main things in teaching is to know 
what to teach first. Blunders such as I have mentioned 
above are common with all bad teachers. 

" When I took some velocipede lessons in town the man 
gave me minute directions how to start. These were absurd 
when I was quite unable to ride. I have practised here on an 
incline where the velocipede starts of itself, and having thus got 



392 R. H. Quick 

the balance and the action of the legs, I fancy I shall soon get 
the starting. 

" My French does not get on as well as I expected. I 
have indeed hardly any advantages here I should not have in 
England, and not liking the people puts me out of humour and 
prevents me profiting by the little I see of them. French 
seems a very hard language to understand and to speak, and 
unless among people whom I had some sympathy with I should 
never begin to talk. The Lalots are the worst people in the 
world for the purpose, and the French generally (and the 
Germans too for that matter) are so fond of the sound of their 
own voices that a foreigner has no chance of getting a word in. 
No doubt it is a nuisance to hear a man floundering about 
in one's native tongue, and unless they had a real interest in 
getting one on they would not be likely to encourage one in 
talking. 

"I should have done better if I had had some regular 
instruction, but no one understands how to teach. 

" I fancy I could teach better than I can learn." 



Expression and Impression in Language Teaching 

" Of course it becomes a question whether it is worth while 
to try to get expression before one has given extensive impres- 
sion. Expression is indeed the only proof of accurate know- 
ledge, and I at present am inclined to think that a drill in 
small sentences involving the main inflections, the most 
common words and the usual prepositions, adverbs, &c, 
should be insisted on at an early stage. Against this it may 
be alleged that to require expression too soon wastes time. 
Impression is much easier, and when impression enough has 
been received, expression will come almost naturally. It is 
certainly very difficult to remember anything about words till 
the words themselves are quite at home in one's mind. It is 



Mastery Method v. Impressionists 393 

the same with people. I see a man passing in the street, and a 
friend tells me 'That man's name is Thompson. He is clerk 
in the Bank of England, lives in Islington and has ten 
children.' If I have never seen or heard of the man before, I 
very soon forget all these particulars. But suppose I have 
noticed him passing the window every day for the last 
fortnight, in this case the information will probably stick." 



The two schools of Language Teaching 

" Sonnenschein has a feud with the Look-and-Say Method 
of learning to read, and the first principles of language learning 
are at stake in this dispute. 

" Au fond we have one party in favour of classifying the 
phenomena of language and giving the facts in order according 
to this classification. This was the aim of the old teachers by 
grammar, though they worked the system stupidly, classified 
badly, confused their classifications with exceptions, and often 
instead of giving the facts in the concrete gave rules about 
things of which the pupil was ignorant. Teaching facts in 
order should not be condemned because it has been done so 
stupidly. 

" On the other side we have people who consider language 
(as Prendergast says) a sphere, so that it does not matter where 
you begin. Some of these would have the facts observed and 
classified by the learners — e.g. Jacotot. Others would have 
no classification at all in the first stages, of which school we 
have Ratich, Hamilton and, latest and most thorough-going of 
all, Prendergast. 

" In teaching to read we have the first party, Sonnenschein 
and Meiklejohn teaching by categories — mab, gab, fab, &c. — 
and the other party telling the child the sound of each word in 
an ordinary sentence, and thus, according to Sonnenschein, 
1 reducing the English language to the level of the Chinese, 



394 R- H- Quick 

having a separate symbol for each word.' And of course it 
might be equally well objected against the teachers of an 
inflected language without categories that they would give each 
word a separate declension or conjugation. I can't help 
thinking that this objection is fatal to the 'spherical' party, at 
least to those who like Ration and his followers at first make 
no use of categories. 

" But here one observes that language teachers are divided 
into two other parties where we find side by side many who, 
according to the previous division, were opposed to one another, 
and also many differing who were before agreed. The two 
parties of which I am now speaking are those which would give 
only few impressions and those impressions perfectly exact and 
distinct, and, on the other hand, those teachers who would 
give a multiplicity of impressions, each impression being in 
itself of course weak and indistinct, and would trust to the 
same impression coming over and over again in different 
connections till it became distinct and strong. Here we find 
Prendergast at one with the old teachers who kept their boys a 
year or two in learning by heart the Eton Latin Grammar, and 
with Jacotot, and the rapid school while they thus lose some 
sphericals do not gain any of the categorists. 

" I myself am naturally of the categorists and still more of 
the slow school ; but I have found practically that the mastery 
plan with or without categories has its Schattenseite. It is slow 
in every sense of the word. There is nothing in it to stimulate 
the energy of the pupil. Jacotot somehow managed to do this 
and his scholars ' taught themselves,' but the ordinary master 
cannot thus stimulate the ordinary scholar, and if the subject 
is dull and is repeated usque ad nauseam, the pupil soon 
' stagnates in the weeds of sloth.' W. W. tells me that he 
worked some Latin translation with his boys very thoroughly 
on the ' mastery ' method, but finding that he could not get his 
boys to do a fair amount of work, he reverted to the ordinary 
plan and forged ahead. At the end of the half the examination 



Multum or Mn Ita? 395 

showed that his boys knew as much about what they had done 
in the usual way as about what they had ' mastered.' 

" In my own attempts to teach German in the ' mastery ' 
way, I seem to myself to have been as unsuccessful as Bowen 
has been on the other system, and that is saying a great deal." 

Doctors differ 

" E. E. Bowen, in his essay (Liberal Education), quotes with 
approval the proverb that one learns to speak well by speaking 
badly. Ascham, in his Schoolmaster, quotes Cicero ' Loquendo 
male loqui discunt,' and advises that speaking Latin should be 
forbidden in the earlier stages. He quotes G. Budaeus, who 
says that he suffered all his life from getting to speak Latin ill 
at first (see Barnard's English Pedagogy, p. 72). Here is a 
discrepancy ! I wonder whether language teachers often con- 
sider which side is right here." 

Multum or Multa ? 

"The plan of getting through a lot of construing, so that 
the boys acquire no end of vague ideas of words (Hamilton- 
ianism) is I think a most erroneous method. With my be- 
ginners I have gone on the other tack entirely and proceeded 
synthetically, making the boys use their knowledge and twist 
and turn the words as fast as they learn them. . . . How odd it 
is that I keep swaying backwards and forwards from the rapid 
impressionist system of Marcel to the Arnold's First French 
Book system, always in favour of the one I have not been 
trying." 

The inductive method 

" ' Intellectual action begins with the perception of dif- 
ferences.' 



396 R. H. Quick 

" So says Bain, a writer I don't often quote. I feel about 
teaching what I feel about religion, that if only one vital truth 
got possession of us thoroughly, it would raise us to a new 
region. Thus the above truth would upset most of the bad 
practice of the schoolroom. E.g. we teach children who 
know no French, the rules about the French adjective. Then 
we tell them that the feminine of bon is bonne. But suppose 
we wrote on the blackboard : — 

" E 1 My father is good. 

" F T Mon pere est bon. 

" E 2 My mother is good. 

" F 2 Ma mere est bonne. 

" Then one asks how many words are the same in E x and 
E 2 ? Ans. Three. How many in F x and F 2 ? Ans. Only one. 
What is the French for ' good ' in one and what in two? In 
this way one can question the whole thing out of the children 
and get them to observe differences. Directly they have 
observed and thus got hold of the thing, make them use it, 
and it will soon be part of their minds. Very little need be 
told. Suppose one goes on writing, Mon frere est bon, Ma 
sceur est bonne, &c, the children will soon find out for them- 
selves when to put bon and when bonne. It might be good 
in time to make a mistake and see if they spot it." 

Capitalising Knowledge 

"11. 12. 88. In Natural Science the workers co-operate, 
and every advance made by an individual is in effect made by 
the whole body of scientific men. But in most other subjects 
this is not so. In education especially there is an utter want 
of capitalised knowledge. Men who have a turn for knowledge 
in this subject seldom have any thinking faculty, and they pile 
together as fuel a mass of stuff, a great deal of which won't 
burn. The thinkers keep on starting from the scratch, and 



Radonvilliers 397 

the doers make their own experiments or fall into the usual 
routine. Take the art of learning languages. Surely some 
sort of agreement might have been reached in this before 
now, but our teachers have not settled first principles, and 
don't know what has been done towards settling them. Marcel 
is out of print. Prendergast's valuable book 1 never reached a 
second edition, and even people who try the Mastery System 
don't seem to have heard of it. 

"The other day C. J. Longman talked to me about the 
grind in classics and the absence of literary taste for the 
ancients in our public schools. He said he took a second at 
Oxford, but when at Harrow he had no notion of the meaning 
of what he read. To-day I stumble on Radonvilliers (1709) 
in Buisson's Dictionnaire, who makes much the same com- 
plaint. 

" His treatise De la maniere (V apprendre les langues, pub- 
lished in 1768 anonymously, is directed against the usual 
method of studying a language by means of a grammar and 
dictionary. ' What (he asks) is language as used by man ? A 
practical art. But arts of this kind are learnt not by reasoning, 
but by exercise. Place a pen between the fingers of a child 
and guide his hand, after a time he will know how to write, 
though he knows nothing of the theory of caligraphy. P^xer- 
cise the ears and tongue of a child, and he will soon under- 
stand what you say and be able to answer you without knowing 
the rules of language. Properly speaking the practical arts 
have no rules. What pass as such are only a collection of the 
observations made as to the manner in which these arts were 
at first exercised by help of unaided natural instinct. It follows 
that skill does not consist in knowing these so-called rules, but 
in observing them without reflection, whether known or not.' 
Radonvilliers, in brief, is a rapid impressionist who advocates 
the Hamiltonian method of interlinear translation." 

1 The Mastery of Language, by Thomas Prendergast (Bentley, 1864). 



398 R. H. Quick 

MEMORY 

Vain repetitions 

" We only see what we want to see, and hear what we want 
to hear. Some sights there are indeed which arrest our atten- 
tion in spite of ourselves, some words to which we cannot 
close our ears, but these are no ordinary sights, no common 
sounds. In learning by heart, mere impressions will not do. 
For two years and a half I have used our school prayers every 
morning, and yet I could not say them by heart." 

Ambiguity of the word Memory 

" No maxim could be more absurdly incorrect than Casau- 
bon's favourite maxim Tantum scimus quantum memoria 
tenemus. I suppose Casaubon would have said, we hold in 
the memory, and therefore know only what we can produce at 
will. Do we know everything that we can with any amount of 
effort and any allowance of time reproduce ? We school- 
masters do not admit this. If a boy hesitates and stumbles 
we say he does not half know his lessons. But if we know 
properly only that which we can produce readily, knowledge is 
a matter of degree, and we really know thoroughly nothing but 
the alphabet and the multiplication tables to the end of the 
fives or sixes. And what are we to say of the vast number of 
things which are in the mind but cannot be reproduced at will ? 
Suppose two students have been at work on the history of 
Greece. One of them has read with interest and intelligence 
the whole of Thirlwall or of Grote. The other has worked up 
Smith's School History till he can promptly reproduce any fact 
in it. 

" According to Casaubon, the latter would know much more 
Greek history than the former. But this is clearly wrong. 



A freak of Memory 399 

The first man might be able to reproduce very little with 
accuracy, but for his whole life every name in Greek history 
would call up in his mind a distinct image with all kinds of 
interests and ideas connected with it. The same name would 
suggest to the other man little beyond a date, and even this it 
would suggest only for a little while after the study was over. 
In a year or two he would have forgotten all he had learned 
and would be glad to forget it." 

A freak of Memory 

"14. 1. 78. The other day at Mr Blackmore's funeral I 
met with a remarkable instance of the action of memory. 
When I was a boy at Wandsworth Mr Blackmore used con- 
stantly to speak of his friend, ' Peter Dornay,' who lived near 
him. I knew Mr Dornay by sight very well, and remember 
him as a youngish man with a striking face, sharp features and 
curly brown hair. This is 34 or 35 years ago. Since that 
time I have never heard or thought of Mr Dornay, and had 
quite forgotten his existence. After the funeral at the house I 
heard a gentleman called Mr Dornay and the name seemed 
familiar, but at first it called up nothing in my mind. By 
degrees I remembered where Mr Dornay used to live, and at 
length I got a tolerably clear image of what he used to look 
like, but I could not see any connection between this image 
and the face of the old man before me. But at last they came 
together, and I recognised the man I had not seen for at least 
34 years. This is a singular instance of an apparently faded 
image being ' developed,' as photographers say, in the mind- 
It is a proof too of the strength of early impressions." 

Fitch on Memory 

" Fitch, in his tract on ' Memory,' published by the Sunday 
School Union, makes memory depend on four things : — 



400 R. H. Quick 

"i. Frequency of repetition. 

" 2. Attention and interest. 

" 3. Desire to remember. 

"4. The degree in which the understanding is exercised 
on the subject. 
" To these should be added the time the idea remains in 
possession of the mind. Also it makes a vast difference 
whether the repetitions are reproductions by exertion of will or 
merely brought about by external suggestion. When I was at 
Harrow I found I could not repeat the prayers I had read 
every morning for two or three years, but directly I began to 
try to say them without reading I soon acquired the power of 
doing so. 

" I have just had a proof that interest alone will not always 
suffice for fixing a thing in one's memory, and that we want a 
subject to remain some time in consciousness or to be brought 
back again and again to it. In looking at a note-book of 1876 
I find some quotations from J. Eachard (1698). These I 
must have made in the British Museum (Aug. 1876), but I 
suppose that I dismissed them from my mind when I had 
made the notes, and the consequence is that. I entirely forgot 
them, and when I came upon them the other day (only 2\ 
years after making them) they seemed a new discovery, and I 
can't remember anything about them, nor have I the least 
notion how I came across the book." 

Vagaries of Memory 

" One great puzzle is that the memory like Babbage's 
machine acts quite right in the main, but with just so much 
undistinguishable error that we cannot thoroughly rely on it. 
Yesterday, 29 Jan. '79, with reference to the scolding article 
in the Quarterly Review, I have in my head some phrases 
about having our ears cudgelled and being thumped with 
words. I soon made out that they were Shakespeare's : of 



Memory inactive 401 

this I felt certain. Just then as Faust in the morning twilight 
sees how 'Farb' um Farbe klart sich los vom Boden, ' so by 
degrees I became conscious that the lines were in King John. 
Next I was sure that they were the words of the Bastard 
Falconbridge. So far I was quite right, but at the same time 
I felt no less certain that the words referred to a string of 
curses from Blanche. Here I was wrong. The cudgeller is 
simply a citizen from the besieged town. Why should my 
memory have misled me in one particular when it was quite 
accurate in the rest? " 

Memory in general not active 

" 16. 10. 80. It has often been observed that when our 
mind is full of a subject everything we fall in with seems to 
connect itself with that subject and afford illustrations to it. 
Now if everything is capable of affording illustrations to the 
subject of our thoughts what a mass of illustrations we should 
suppose would occur to people of great memories! But, 
practically, there is a limit to this crowding of illustrations. 
Our memories are for the most part not active memories. 
They seldom suggest illustrations to us. When our minds are 
full of a subject we may read something apparently not con- 
nected with it and find all sorts of unexpected illustrations, but 
if we did not read that book, however familiar we might be 
with it the chances are that the illustrations would not occur 
to us. Most of what we hold in our memory is stored away 
and not ready for use. I have observed this even in Macaulay. 
When I was very familiar with his Addison I read Johnson's 
Addison and I found that Macaulay had not gathered his 
material from all quarters, but had just read up Johnson and 
used his Addison almost exclusively. Similarly Ruskin has 
lately written on Byron, and he takes most of his quotations 
from a poem not much known, The Island, which Ruskin had 
evidently just read. He then talks about style, and he gives 

2D 



402 R. H. Quick 

some very apposite quotations from Shakespeare, but except 
one from Coriolanus they are all from Henry V., which he 
no doubt had just been reading. I daresay we could by care- 
ful study find out what authors had been recently reading 
when they were composing. Seeley once remarked to me 
that the passage in Lycidas about the Angel of the guarded 
mount that looks on Namancos and Bayona's hold, was an 
outcome of the study he had just been making of the geography 
of the West of England for his intended epic of King Arthur." 



Quo semel est imbuta recens 

"30. 4. 83. We hear a good deal about the necessary 
fading of impressions in process of time, but it seems possible 
to get things so fixed in the mind that they don't fade. I 
suppose different minds differ greatly in this respect. I once 
met an English lady who by twenty years' residence in 
Germany had in a great measure forgotten English. She 
certainly spoke it with great difficulty, though what she did say 
was correct and the accent perfect. My old friend Monicke, 
on the other hand, had not in the least suffered in his English 
by a twenty years' residence in Leipzig. It is true he had 
given lessons in English, but had hardly spoken it at all. 
Llewelyn Davies told me that, after some twenty years' 
interval, he took up some classical Greek and found, as 
far as he could judge, he had lost nothing in the time. 
Many things, some of them quite trivial, seem to become so 
much a part of our mind that time has no effect on them. 
Some lines of Southey's about Cornelius Agrippa I learnt 
from hearing other boys say them when I was at school at 
Kingston, and I remember them after forty years, and yet 
I could never get my pupils to remember poetry for as many 
weeks." 



Early Memories 403 



Memory of subjective feelings 

"28. 3. 84. When we talk of memory we generally think 
only of what comes to us from without, the thoughts or facts 
we learn from other people. But we suffer most perhaps from 
forgetting our own thoughts and experiences. This has been 
brought home to me lately by preaching. I think of a subject 
and get to see a good deal of truth connected with it. But 
after I have preached on this subject the truth is lost again. 
My mind is soon as poor as it was before, and I wonder I had 
so much to say. This, of course, applies more especially to 
extempore preaching, but even if I write the sermon the words 
sometimes remain after the thought has faded from them. 
What we once took interest in remains like the crowns and 
wreaths of an illumination. We see the devices next day, 
but the lights have gone out and they interest us no longer." 

' Still so gently o'er me stealing 
MemYy will bring back the feeling. 1 

" 24. 6. 88. I have lately been brought in contact with 
scenes that I have not visited for 40 years. One thing strikes 
me as noteworthy. The past does not suddenly flash into the 
mind's eye, but it comes like a scene from which a fog is 
slowly lifting. When I first spoke of the Yelfs who were at 
school with me, I could hardly remember Alfred and did not 
feel sure of his name, but in a day or two I remembered all 
about him. In the same way things come back gradually 
when I tell Dora stories of my schoolboy life, of boating at 
Cambridge, of Swiss travel, &c. At first I can see very little, 
but by degrees 'Farb' urn Farbe klart sich los vom Boden. ' 
After telling Dora about my running down the G.emmi in a 
mist, I recalled the name of the two men (Cross) with whom 
I had been walking. I don't think their name has come into 
my head for 30 years, and I can't recall the look of them now. 



404 ^. H. Quick 

As these glimpses come back one wonders how much of the 
last 50 years it would be possible to recall. There is little 
visible now, but I have no doubt much would come back of 
which I have now no consciousness." 



A Trick of Memory 

"9 Jan. '86. An odd instance of the working of memory 
occurred to me a day or two ago. I went for 10 or 12 years 
to Saunders, the dentist (now Sir Edwin Saunders), and then 
in 1870 I gave him up, thinking his eyesight might be fail- 
ing, and went to George Parkinson, to whom I have been 
once or twice a year ever since, i.e. for 16 years. Yet the 
other day when the servant opened the door, I said, 'I have 
an appointment with Mr Saunders.' " 



Memory and Intelligence 

"It is often supposed that memory in childhood acts in- 
dependently of understanding, and certainly it is made to 
do so, but we retain what we understand much better than 
what we. don't understand. Hence in the first of the Pro- 
vinciates Pascal says of the word 'prochain ' in 'pouvoir 
prochain, ' 'Je cherchais ma memoire de ce terme car mon 
intelligence n'y avait aucune part. Et de peur de l'oublier 
je fus promptement retrouver mon Janseniste.' " 



Word v. Thing 

" It is often contended that if we know a thing it does not 
matter the least whether we know the name of the thing, 
except of course as a matter of convenience. But somehow 
knowledge clusters about a name, and is far better retained in 
connection with the name than it could possibly be otherwise. 



Word v. Thing 405 

"This is brought home to me by recent experience. I ran 
across a boy (a young man now) the other day at Harrow, and 
knew him perfectly well as having been in the school. I knew 
too that I had had a great deal to do with him. A great deal 
about him came into my mind, his odd manner when I found 
fault with him, &c, but I could not think of his name and 
could not recall for certain whether I had taught him on the 
Modern or Classical side. After puzzling a long time I asked 
C, and directly I heard the name a flood of light came into my 
mind and I knew all about the boy without any further effort of 
any kind. When I was at the school too I felt that I knew 
boys if I knew their names far better than I should have known 
the same boys had I known them by sight without names." 



406 R. H. Quick 



ADVERSARIA MORALIA 

Conservatism and Liberalism 

"5 March, '74. The late 'Conservative reaction' has set 
one thinking about the tendencies which go by the names 
of conservatism and liberalism. The true attitude of mind 
must surely be that of the ideal liberal. We are too prone 
to tolerate what is bad, or at least imperfect, when we might 
attain to something better. 'Let what is broken so remain,' — 
this is what our laziness says, and says it in a variety of 
forms. I suppose J. S. Mill, in his celebrated saying that 
stupid people are Tories, meant that stupid people have no 
perception of ideal good, no energy of mind to get beyond 
the actual with which they are in contact. But there is a 
liberalism quite as mischievous and perhaps as stupid, a lib- 
eralism which is in love with change as change, and adopts 
the formula, ' Whatever is, is wrong. ' During the French 
Revolution there was a lawsuit about some land. The party 
in possession showed that the land had been in the hands 
of the family for centuries. 'In that case,' said the judge, 
' there ought certainly to be a change, ' and decided against 
the occupant. As people get on in life they get more and 
more to hate this sort of liberalism. Moreover, they have 
experienced the failure of many changes which were ushered 
in with a fanfare of trumpets, and they prefer to bear the ills 
they have. 

" For my part I have to struggle against the conservatism 
within me that is tolerant of all kinds of evil. Just at first, 
when I get into a new sphere, I see what should be altered, 
but I very soon get accustomed to things as they are, and I 
generally (especially when I can shift the responsibility on to 
others' shoulders) go on in the usual way. ' What pleasure 



Pictures queue ss of London 407 

can we have to war with evil ? ' and yet what is there really 
noble in life except this warfare? Scripture speaks of the 
Christian as girding up the loins of his mind for this ever 
renewed contest. One of the chief causes of failure in my 
life has been that I have, in Yankee phrase, let things slide. . . . 
People who have no personal aims are very apt to do every- 
thing with the weakness of amateurs. They seem to think 
that everything they do is so much more than might be ex- 
pected of them, and they therefore rest contented with very 
poor performances. Men who want to gain something for 
themselves are not so soon satisfied. 

"At Cranleigh I very often saw where things should have 
been altered. I hinted the alteration to Merriman. He pooh- 
poohed it, and I considered myself no longer responsible for 
what was wrong and let things slide as usual." 

Common sights and a poetic atmosphere 

"'It is the very essence of the idyl to set forth the poetry 
which lies in the simpler manifestations of Man and Nature; 
yet not explicitly by a reflective moralizing on them, as almost 
all our idylists — Cowper, Gray, Crabbe and Wordsworth — 
have been in the habit of doing, but implicitly, by investing 
them all with a rich and delightful tone of colouring, perfect 
grace of manner, perfect melody of rhythm, which, like a gor- 
geous summer atmosphere, shall glorify without altering the 
most trivial and homely sights.' C. Kingsley, Miscellanies, i. 
225. I should not enter into this simile so thoroughly had 
I not had a singular sight once in my life which I can never 
forget. One summer evening, before the days of the Holborn 
Viaduct, I was driving in a hansom from Newgate Street 
westward. To my astonishment I looked across the valley 
from near the prison (Skinner Street, I think) and saw the 
other side with its common-place houses and very common- 
place chimneys lighted up by the evening sun and making a 



408 R. H. Quick 

most lovely landscape, so lovely that it impressed itself on my 
mind's eye for life." • 

General inaccuracy and ignorance 

"There is very little accurate knowledge in the world about 
anything. Educated people differ from uneducated chiefly in 
having ideas, and therefore interests connected with a much 
wider range of subjects, and also in their power of using such 
knowledge as they have. I have lately met with some odd 
instances of ignorance in specialists. When Lalot was cor- 
recting my dictees at Neuilly he very often had to look out 
words in a dictionary to see whether a consonant was to be 
doubled or not. Butler one day found some unusual use of 
quin in a boy's composition and consulted Hallam about it; 
but neither the old nor the young senior classic could decide 
whether it was allowable. When J. C. was with me he was 
translating to me a piece of Caesar in which the letters for 
400 (guadringenti) occurred. I didn't know the Latin, and 
when I asked Nettleship he did not know either, though one 
of the best Latin scholars in England. We are amazed at 
the ignorance boys show in examinations, but I suspect some 
marvellous results would come out if we masters could be 
examined." 

Routine 

"This tendency to routine work is the oddest thing I know 
about the ordinary Englishman. One is never contented un- 
less employed, and the employment must be pretty easy, so 
that one has not to energise much or one speedily tires. But 
what is the consequence of thus letting off all one's steam 
in routine work? The work becomes mechanical, and one 
hardly asks, much less seeks, for higher truth. If I believed 
in transmigration of souls I should expect to work hereafter 
as a turnspit. All my strength would then go in doing what 
a simple machine would do better, and this would be a very 



Routine 409 

fitting result of my present life, especially if I were a slow turn- 
spit and were bullied accordingly. 

"What wonderful people we are! Without faith in the 
Divine Will how do we manage to be happy even for a 
day? With faith how do we manage to spend even a day 
carelessly? The old Romans were consistent enough with 
their Carpe diem, but it was but a sorry business this living 
for to-day. What does the pleasure of the day matter when 
the day is over? To be sure the remembrance of past pleas- 
ure may be present pleasure, but this is not often so if the 
pleasure we remember be our own. And in any case a little 
more pleasure or a little less, what does it matter when the 
long night comes? This, which one might suppose the most 
obvious reflection in the world, does not seem the most ordi- 
nary. There are still found people enough to keep up a 
London season, though perhaps it is not so much after all 
love of pleasure that keeps the majority in bondage as it is 
mere weakness of will. A tremendous force must be neces- 
sary to enable a man to give up, say the army like C, and 
go in no service but the Saviour's to Newfoundland, and yet 
he is no doubt a gainer even on this side the grave. 

. " I am puzzled to know what St. Paul meant when he says 
that, if Christians have no hope except in this life, they are 
of all men the most miserable. It seems to me that no 
genuine happiness is possible but that which is found in 
seeking the happiness of others. And even if St. Paul meant 
'the most deluded,' I doubt if people who believed in non- 
existent happiness beyond the grave would be more deluded 
than many believers in happiness on this side of it." 

Life needs pi'e arrangement 

"When we say over and over again that we have done 
the things that we ought not to have done and left undone 
the things we ought to have done, there is often a feeling 



410 R. H. Quick 

of unreality about the confession. We are not conscious of 
wrong things done or right things left undone, and though 
we think in a general or vague sort of way that such things 
might be found on enquiry, we don't trouble ourselves to 
enquire. The consequence is that our life proceeds on a 
low level, and we make no effort to lift it to a higher one. 
There is no plan in our conduct. We are slaves to the 
desire or the apparent need of the moment, and we are only 
dimly conscious of things more important. The business of 
the hour engrosses us; and, if we get a few moments now 
and then when we escape from the claims of petty occupa- 
tion, we forget our higher aims and intentions and catch at 
some amusement or small unnecessary employment till our 
leisure is over and we begin to turn the wheel again. Occa- 
sionally some strong feeling or keen desire for an object may 
supply the place of arrangement and method and render 
conscious effort unnecessary; but in ordinary lives there is 
no such feeling or desire. In them, therefore, life cannot be 
spent well without careful thought and prearrangement. There 
must be a clear consciousness of aim and some effort after 
the prearrangement of time and some method in seeking to 
attain our ends. As I said, some strong feeling, religious or 
other, will make effort and method unnecessary, but generally 
lives spent without effort become meagre and poor. Time is 
spent on a host of things which either should not be done 
at all, or should be despatched much more rapidly. And 
while those things are done which should not be done, things 
of vital importance are neglected for want of time. One would 
gladly study great books and thus associate with great minds, 
but one has not the time. In spite of this one reads a vast 
amount of the poorest stuff as it appears, especially in the 
newspapers. Of course the newspapers must be looked at, 
but we allow ourselves to spend unlimited time over them 
and to read a number of things which are not the least 
worth reading." 



Theory v. Practice 4 1 1 



Ha,7'd work 

" Lord Derby says that the power of working hard comes 
by habit, and this I do not for a moment dispute. Concen- 
tration and power of knocking off work are to a great extent 
matter of habit. But the amount of work a man may do, 
i.e. the number of hours he may spend upon it without 
recreation, depends upon his physique. Temple, when at 
Rugby, gave up his vacation to the School Commission and 
worked some twelve hours a day on it. Butler at Harrow 
has at times, after a hard day's work, spent the whole night 
in looking over prize compositions. Such feats would be 
for me physical impossibilities, and it would be for me as 
sensible to attempt them as to try to swim across from 
Dover to Calais like Captain Webb. I am just now in a 
particularly vigorous state of health, yet when on the strength 
of this I worked yesterday six hours at my lectures for Cam- 
bridge, my head gave way." 

Theoretical 

"'Theoretical ' and 'theorist' are in English common 
terms of depreciation, and there is always some truth at the 
bottom of a feeling when it is strong enough to give a new 
denotation to a word. Now first of all there seems a kind 
of natural antithesis between saying and doing, and we all 
know that if there is to be a comparison between them, 
practice must be allowed to be much better than precept. 
This consciousness is appealed to in the Bible, as in the 
parable when the smooth 'I go, Sir,' of the son who went 
not is compared with the rude 'I will not' of the son who 
went. Also the civil words 'Be ye warmed and filled ' are 
shown to be worse than useless if they take the place of the 
corresponding action. In these cases saying is contrasted 



412 R. H. Quick 

with willing to do. Often saying is compared with being 
able to do. If a man professes much, we are apt to mis- 
trust his will to serve us. If he talks much of how he 
would do a thing, we suspect he would not do it. The 
contrast between power and talking is well brought out in 
the Athenian story of the two architects. Here we see that 
the power of saying the right thing is supposed to justify a 
presumption against the speaker's being able to do it. I 
suppose the notion is that if a man has thrown his energy 
into expression, he will not have enough left for action; if 
he has become a good orator, he is not likely to have be- 
come a good architect as well. The mere fact of an archi- 
tect's proving that he knew what ought to be done should 
certainly not be taken as evidence against his being able to 
do it. At all events we never push our dread of theory to 
this extent. If a man is a good preacher we do not thence 
infer that he is a worse Christian than other people. We 
do not consider an architect or a doctor or a lawyer to be 
disqualified for the successful practice of his profession by 
having written a good book about it. We only go so far 
as to say that a man may have written a good book on archi- 
tecture and yet not be a good practical architect. 

"Apropos of what I have said above I may give an anec- 
dote told me by C. M. She knew a clever old doctor who 
candidly confessed that he was not good at diagnosis. One 
of her family went to him for some form of skin disease, but 
got rather worse than better under his treatment. At last 
she consulted a London physician, who cured her. When 
taking leave of her, the physician happened to ask where 
she lived, and said, 'You have a very clever doctor for the 
skin in your neighbourhood : I wonder why you came to 
me?' Answer: 'I was under his care before I came to you, 
and I got worse instead of better.' Doctor: 'That's very 
odd. I have been treating you according to what I have 
learnt from a book of his.' " 



Art and theory of art 413 



Good workers may be dumb dogs 

11 Das ist ein schlechter Arbeitsmann 
Der nicht vom Handwerk reden kann." 

" But in this proverb it is assumed that the workman talks 
from his practical acquaintance with the work. And I am 
by no means sure that the proverb is true. The following 
instance, at all events, goes against it. Sterndale Bennett 
had on one occasion to talk to a Ladies' College about his 
trade; in other words he had, according to custom, to give 
an opening lecture. But apparently, great as he was both as 
a composer and performer, he had never let his consciousness 
play round his occupation, and the consequence was he had 
nothing to say. I remember that he recommended young 
ladies to study harmony for the following exquisite reason. 
It might happen to them in the course of their lives to have 
to try a new pianoforte. They would sit down and try it in 
one key and then would wish to go to another key. 'Now,' 
said the Professor, 'if you have not learnt harmony you will 
not know how to modulate, and you will be driven to leave 
off in one key and begin again in another.' Surely, in com- 
parison with this, the reasons for learning music and dancing 
given by the professors of these arts in the Bourgeois Genti/- 
homme are common sense itself." 



Interest fades with lapse of time 

"That mere lapse of time brings with it loss of interest 
is a very important fact in teaching, and yet it is very often 
overlooked. We should remember that spaces of time are 
really much longer to the young than to us, so intervals that 
seem short to us may be amply long enough for the cooling 
of interest in the young. At Harrow there used to be a 



414 R. H. Quick 

« 

lesson once a week in Horace. A blacksmith, as Comenius 
would say, might as well let the iron cool and heat it again 
between each stroke. The climax of absurdity was reached, 
however, in giving out a set of French compositions carefully 
corrected by the master a week after the boys had given 
them in. 

" In daily life we have numberless proofs of the rapid 
cooling of interest. We get a letter and don't answer it at 
once. If we want to answer it at all this delay is a mistake, 
for we fail to do many things, not so much for lack of time 
as for lack of interest, and our stock of interest in that letter 
will be less to-morrow than to-day, and much less a week 
after. So, although it seems to us that we can as easily 
answer the letter to-morrow or next week, that is really a 
fallacy of laziness. If we want to get a notion how our in- 
terests keep decaying, we have only to look at an old diary 
of our own. Even if we keep a record, not of employments 
but of thoughts, we are astonished to see how our minds have 
been estranged from our own offspring." 

Terrible familiarity 

"This, as Helps points out, is one of the commonest ob- 
stacles to clear vision. I have at times seen obvious abuses 
going on under some high-minded man who might have been 
expected to check them before he could rest in his bed, and 
yet they have gone on year after year and there is no sign 
of their affecting his repose. The chief reason why they do 
not shock him is that he is so familiar with them that he 
does not see them in their true colours. Very often a new 
headmaster resolves to look about him well before he makes 
any changes. This may be desirable for many reasons, but 
he should be very careful not only to look while he can see, 
but also to note down very carefully his first impressions. 
Every day he tolerates what seems to him intolerable, will 



Interest and the Will 415 

make it appear so in a less degree, and in the end he may 
jog on with it very contentedly. 

" When I first took duty at the Workhouse here the sight 
of the congregation moved me strangely. The half-educated 
faces of some of the grown-up girls quite appalled me, and 
I felt very sad when I looked at the poor old men whose 
lives had been failures, and who had now nothing to care 
for and no one to be cared for by on this side the grave. 
All sorts of reflections came into my mind unbidden when 
I looked at my congregation; but now I can see nothing in 
them that either distresses me or affects me in any way. I 
can make reflections about them if I choose, but not a thought 
of any kind comes spontaneously." 

Interest and the Will 

"The springs of action within us admit of division into 
two classes: (1) those that act under the influence of the 
will, (2) those that act independently of the will. The chief 
department of the will is found in our conception of duty. 
We ought to do this or that, and our will accordingly en- 
deavours to insist on the action. But the will, though a 
tremendous force, is like the force of steam : directly tension 
is removed it ceases to act. And so it comes to pass that 
other forces, in themselves quite insignificant compared with 
the will, do in the long run bring about greater results, for 
they act continuously without being observed, just like a 
current in water or a focus of attraction. This it is which 
gives such vast importance to what we call interest. Directly 
the mind is interested in any subject it is ceaselessly on the 
look-out for whatever is connected with the subject, and it 
acquires all that is to be known involuntarily. As the will 
does not count for much in ordinary people, we find that 
their knowledge extends to what interests them and no 
further. As their sphere of interest is very limited, so is 



41 6 R. H. Quick 

their sphere of knowledge. Sometimes, indeed, the interest 
and consequent knowledge gain in intensity and accuracy 
from being concentrated on a small area. The schoolmaster 
is provoked when he finds that boys who 'can't remember' 
anything in their lessons can remember everything connected 
with their games or their homes. The schoolmaster, poor 
man, has as a rule a hard job in hand, for he must make 
his boys acquire certain knowledge, and as they haven't the 
slightest interest in the subject, they can learn only by an 
effort of will. But the boys, if left to themselves, would 
have as little will as interest, so the schoolmaster has to 
produce the will. This he can do only by fear of punish- 
ment, and this method of course stimulates only the mini- 
mum of will necessary for escape, so the knowledge acquired 
is of very small amount, and worse still, is of a kind which 
is almost directly lost again. But to leave the woes of school- 
masters (which will probably never more be mine), I remark 
that the involuntary springs of action have by far the prin- 
cipal part in the lives of most people. Bacon assumes that 
you may leave what you like doing to take care of itself, but 
I have never found it so. Acting on his principle, I have 
often forced myself to work at what I did not like, and 
have thus crowded out what I did like, though this was 
quite as well worth doing, and I should have done it much 
better." 

ave^eracrTos /3ibs 

"The note-taking side of life is the side most neglected. 
The schoolmaster says of his boys, 'They won't think,' but 
this is true of us all, the schoolmaster included. We are 
happy only when we are fussing about some work that seems 
necessary, but whether it is necessary, and if necessary, whether 
it is best done as we are doing it, we will not be at the pains 
to inquire." 



Laisser alter 417 



Educational reforms generally improvised expedients 

"1. 3. 87. Franklin, after telling us in his Autobiography 
how his plan for federation was rejected for an inferior plan, 
says, 'Those who govern having much business on their hands, 
do not generally like to take the trouble of considering and 
carrying into execution new projects. The best public meas- 
ures are therefore seldom adopted from previous wisdom, but 
forced by the occasion. ' 

" It would be interesting to see how far improvements in 
any department of our activity come of a priori reasoning or 
' theory, ' and how far they are 'forced by the occasion.' The 
English maxim is, 'Let well alone.' If there is no hitch, be 
contented. In this way our education continued unaltered 
for 200 years. But then there came a hitch. Knowledge 
of modern languages seemed needed, and our teachers could 
not give it. Still more, natural science began to claim at- 
tention, and our schoolmasters knew nothing about it. So 
the force of the occasion compels alterations, and at such 
times even theorists have some chance of getting an audi- 
ence. But still what Franklin says is only too true. Those 
who have to act are mostly too busy to consider anything 
which seems theoretical. When a change is necessary they, 
as a rule, try to minimise it for fear of throwing the machine 
out of gear, so improvement comes slowly, slowly, and such 
changes as are made are often mere expedients which right 
reason would not sanction. Take our elementary education. 
We were dissatisfied with it and a clever, self-confident man 
comes with an expedient for getting the three R's. taught. 
The expedient was a very bad one; but, once established, 
it stayed because no one dared to start afresh. So there has 
been no end of tinkering, but no real improvement." 

2E 



4i 8 R. H. Quick 

Theory 

" 1 8. 3. 87. In a conversation with F. T. (an artist) about 
Ruskin's works yesterday, he remarked that he considered 'all 
theoretical talk unprofitable.' This, I take it, represents the 
views of most Englishmen, and anything more astoundingly 
false and mischievous I can hardly imagine. It means ulti- 
mately that no good can come of the exercise of men's higher 
powers, and that their wisest course is to give up thinking 
and to keep on trying to do. But why put out the eyes of 
our mind ? They may surely teach us truths, and useful truths 
too, that the hands could not find out without them. 

" There is an old joke about the German professor who went 
for years a roundabout way from his house to his lecture- 
room. When he was getting old he petitioned to be moved 
nearer to the University buildings, as he could not stand the 
fatigue of so long a walk. A deputation was appointed to 
wait on him and show him the straight road, and this had 
all the effect of a change of residence. Some people seem 
to think that, by persisting long enough on the circuitous 
route, they make it the shortest. They may indeed get ac- 
customed to the walk, and even improve their pace, but it 
is a roundabout way after all. No doubt, in trying to find 
the shortest way we may at times get into a blind alley, so 
that instances do occur in which the thoughtful man makes 
a mistake and the thoughtless goes right, but in the long 
run there can be no doubt that the thoughtful man has the 
best of it. 'But theory is thought without action.' No, this 
is not the true account of it. The word ' theory ' is indeed 
used in various senses, but it is only when theory is thought 
bearing on action that it becomes important." 

The Fallacy of Self-interest 

"22. 3. 84. Keeping the mind's eye clear is of course 
as much an intellectual as a moral power. It is almost im- 



Lessing 419 

possible to get trustworthy evidence from the uneducated. 
At the school library I give out the books to the children 
one week in the order of the alphabet, and the following 
week in inverted order. I have omitted to keep account 
for myself, and have asked them in which order it was last. 
Now here is a very simple, and by them easily remembered, 
fact. I don't think the children mean to give a false an- 
swer, yet the same thing happens every time I ask this ques- 
tion. All those whose names begin with early letters of the 
alphabet are positive that last week I began with the Z's 
and vice versa. If I ask a child whose name comes about 
the middle, he can't remember which it was." 

Lessing and Truth 

"'If God held in His right hand all truth and in His 
left hand nothing but the ever active impulse to seek for 
truth, even with the condition attached that I should per- 
petually go astray, and said to me 'Choose,' I should with 
all humility grasp His left hand and say, 'Give, Father; Pure 
truth is for Thee alone. ' 

"With reference to education, one is accustomed to main- 
tain that the actual knowledge given is of trifling value, and 
that the main thing to think of is desire of knowledge and 
power to acquire it; but in saying this one generally thinks 
of knowledge as the thing to be sought in the end. In the 
above passage, however, Lessing makes knowledge a mere 
means. He would have everybody labour for truth, but the 
exercise is to be in itself the reward. This notion, which 
makes the pursuit of truth a kind of fox-hunting, brings one 
dangerously near to the system of the Greek Sophists. If 
exercise is the main thing, sham truth may serve the. purpose 
as well as real. There seems to me something absurd in 
the notion that the desire of truth, though accompanied by 
error, is a better thing than the possession of truth. Lessing 



420 R. H. Quick 

does not really desire truth, but desires the desire of it. 
But the desire is impossible in the man who would rather 
have the desire with error than have the truth itself, for the 
genuine desire must be, not for the desire, but for the truth 
before all things. 

"As one goes on in life, one is more and more convinced 
that there is very little love of the truth to be found." 

Art of Living 

"5. 2. 81. (Guildford lodgings.) As far as I can see, 
the great difficulty of life is how to avoid laisser alter. With 
young people the danger is not so great: their habits are 
not so formed. They have to do many things which they 
want to do better than they can do them, and this in most 
cases involves some effort for improvement. Young people, 
too, have their ambitions, and they expect to attain to all 
sorts of excellence. But after forty-five a man's way of acting 
has settled into a formed habit. He may be conscious it is 
not the best possible; but it seems a part of him, and he 
no more thinks of changing it than of changing his features. 
And his ambitions have died out. He doesn't think of his 
* future self as superior to his present self. So he doesn't 
feel his deficiencies, and doesn't hope for improvement. He 
therefore tends to go in a groove easily enough, perhaps 
pleasantly, but without doing half the good which lies within 
his power. A few people, like the philosopher Locke, study 
an art of living and go on as students of it till the last, 
but after all there is so very much that we do that seems 
to admit of no effort that we get almost necessarily to 
act without effort in everything. Meals, for instance; the 
young eat fast or slowly according to some notion they have 
of the right thing, they are tempted to eat more than is 
good for them, especially of food they are fond of ; but all 
this is settled by habit for the middle-aged man, and I don't 



Art of Living 421 

know how Locke himself could have brought his art to bear 
upon his meals. Conversation would seem to offer a field 
for cultivating an art of living, but there would be an un- 
pleasant restraint on conversation if the talkers were trying 
to do anything but communicate their passing thoughts. In 
choice of subjects we are mostly at the mercy of chance. 
Few of us have thoughts ready to communicate, still fewer 
can think as they go along, so we naturally fall into personal 
talk when we have a common fund of interest and can do 
without much thinking. The only art that seems to me 
allowable in conversation is to bear in mind that what is 
interesting to oneself is probably not interesting at all to 
one's companion, and to endeavour to bring the talk to a 
common subject of interest; or, where this is not easy, to 
one in which the other party is interested, or at least for the 
time to get up some interest in that. 

"As for the work of one's calling, it generally forces itself 
upon one in such a way as to leave little option for effort. 
And so, after all, it is only what we may call our leisure 
time that gives much scope for the art, and we generally 
muddle away this time and do as little with it as with the 
coppers in our pockets. Many of us never have any leisure 
time proper, i.e. we are not up with our affairs; we are 
always conscious of a heap of things that want doing, of 
letters that want answering, &c. &c, and so we seem to 
have no time to employ deliberately on some chosen occu- 
pation, reading or thinking or favourite study; and yet we 
do not keep pegging away to get abreast of our work. In 
fact we fritter away a great deal of time, and our conscious- 
ness of work to be done merely has the effect of paralysing 
us when we are not working. 

" Some people of strong will determine to give so much 
time a day to a particular pursuit and carry out their reso- 
lution; but with most of us such plans speedily break down. 
We go on very well for two or three days, and then some 



422 R. H. Quick 

trifle puts us out, a headache maybe or a journey, and the 
spell seems broken and our plan has come to an end. 
Goethe says that we should read a beautiful poem and see 
a beautiful picture every day of our lives; but for seeing an 
eye is necessary as well as an object, and in many moods 
we cannot see either poem or picture. I have known men 
with a wonderful faculty for putting off all cares and worries, 
just as Sir Thomas More threw off his official dress and 
said, 'Lie there, Lord Chancellor.' But ordinary people 
cannot do thus, and in point of fact one is not often free 
enough from the interests and cares of one's daily life to 
take a trip to the realms which bards in fealty to Apollo 
hold. There are, as it were, three worlds, not indeed quite 
distinct, but yet distinguishable, in which our spirits live. 
First, there is the world of religious faith in which everything 
points to God; second, the world of literature; third, the 
world of personal relations and interests. Now the third 
should be influenced and coloured, so to speak, by the first, 
and it may be affected by the second, but there is some 
antagonism between the second and third. Some highly 
gifted men are at home in all three worlds; nay they may, 
like Kingsley, add a fourth. Kingsley was more at home in 
the world of nature, in the physical universe, than some men 
are in their own households. But, generally speaking, those 
who are intensely interested in persons don't care for books, 
and those who fly to books are somewhat estranged from their 
immediate surroundings." 

Thinking 

"24. 8. 86. I sat thinking just now, when the flies near 
the ceiling caught my eye. First they reminded me of days 
nearly half a century ago, when I used to watch them darting 
at one another in the air, just as they are doing now. 

"The first thought that this suggested was, How very 



Thinking 423 

much more external things are to the young than to the 
old. Now these flies only catch my eye by accident, and 
would hardly be observed at all if they did not bring up 
the memory of old times. Then they were intensely inter- 
esting to me, and I used to sit or lie and watch them for 
the hour together. 

"Next 1 was struck with the permanence of Nature and 
the apparent insignificance of the individual. These flies do 
just the same and look just the same, and we neglect the 
fact that they are not the same and speak of them as 'the 
flies. ' It is the permanence of the function that strikes us, 
the change of the individual is not important enough to be 
noticed. If we had nothing but natural religion to guide 
us, surely we should conclude with Gray, 'Poor moralist, 
and what art thou? A solitary fly,' and find out wisdom in 
making ourselves as comfortable as possible while summer 
lasted, without troubling ourselves about the frost, which no 
effort of ours could delay. So our higher faculties would 
exercise themselves best in self-effacement, and we should 
have reason to regret them as much more bother than profit. 
But the 'good news ' takes us out of ourselves, and tells us 
to lose our lives now with the assurance of finding them both 
now and for ever through the loss." 

Thought and action 

"28. 12. 83. This morning I have been reading the two 
lectures on India in Seeley's Expansion of England. One 
reflection of a general kind is suggested to me. How very 
small a force the intellect is in ordinary lives 1 With us the 
statesman is not a thinker, but a doer, a manager, and 
I have no doubt that many of the problems, immensely im- 
portant as they are, which are here stated by Seeley, have 
never been thought of by us as a nation or by the leading 
men who have guided the fortunes of India. 

"It is just the same in all walks of life. Our teachers 



424 R. H. Quick 

can't be induced to think about their calling. Thinking 
seems to them mere fiddle-faddle, 'theory,' &c. ; their busi- 
ness is to be busy and keep on doing something. They 
would rather correct exercises for ten hours in the tradi- 
tional way than think for ten minutes how it would be best 
to correct them. The same defect makes preaching so diffi- 
cult. My own life is not under the influence of thought, 
but of habit influenced by an inarticulate sense of duty, by 
a desire for the comfort of those about me, more particularly 
of those I love, and in a remoter degree, I fear, of religious 
faith. Now all this lies very much out of the range of the 
intellect; and, if my head runs on small concerns of daily 
life, with little thought properly so called, I have little doubt 
that the same is true of the less educated around me. But 
for sermons one must be in one of three regions : (1) thought, 
(2) feeling, (3) common-place. I don't feel comfortable in 
number (3), which is the largest and most accessible. Feeling 
is not for ordinary occasions, and thought is a region strange 
to me, and stranger to those who hear me. This absence of 
thought prevents us advancing rapidly in the science and art 
of life. In the physical sciences every right thought leaves a 
result which is capitalised and becomes part of the science. 
But in the science and art of life we start without capital. 
We could not, if we would, appropriate the thoughts of good 
men before us as the physicists can; and, though no doubt 
we might gain much by studying their thoughts, we will not 
take the trouble. 

"Take teaching. Not one teacher in a thousand cares to 
know what the great thinkers who have turned their attention 
to teaching have said about it." 

The art of living 

"18. 5. 83. To correct my inveterate habit of pottering, 
I sometimes take some engagement to do a piece of work by a 
particular day in order to put pressure on myself to work at it. 



The art of living 425 

" P. H. Hamerton, in The Intellectual Life, has some good 
remarks on people who like to be hurried. He says that in- 
telligence and energy are beneficially stimulated by pressure 
from without, but that the highest intellectual work cannot 
stand such pressure. I think Hamerton does not distinguish 
as he should between different kinds of employment. Some 
things are done equally well whether we hurry or dawdle; 
others, though improved by pains, are not improved enough 
to make up for the extra time spent, or are not of much value 
even when brought to perfection. Writing, for instance. If I 
took pains I could write a very fair hand, much better at all 
events than I do write. I said 'took pains,' I should have 
said 'wrote slowly.' Pains one ought always to take, but in 
a matter like writing one ought not to give time merely to 
secure neatness. The thing aimed at should be, not neat 
writing, but the fastest writing that one can make easily 
legible." 

Character judged by comparison 

"12 Aug. '85. One is apt to forget that, when we speak of 
anything or anybody as good, we have no absolute standard 
and speak only by some comparison, often made uncon- 
sciously. The very best man we know we should probably 
consider a very indifferent angel. This latent comparison 
lurks under all adjectives. It has occurred to me that our 
estimate of ourselves of ten differs from other people's estimate 
of us, because we compare ourselves with those only who are 
much in our minds, and the same persons are not likely to 
be much in the minds of others; e.g. I was thrown much 
in early manhood with J. Llewelyn Davies. I found myself 
very inferior to him in some respects, and have got to look 
upon myself as weaker in these points than perhaps I really 
am. Again, a natural standard of reference is one's closest 
friend. From this I have got to think of myself as rather a 



426 R. H. Quick 

gushing person. Perhaps those who introduce me into some 
other comparison think me cold and hard." 

Der Schlendrian 

"I had recently had a parochial visit or two to pay for 
Llewelyn Davies in Mary-le-bone. As usual one seems to 
get a glimpse into a world one was before unconscious of, 
and will be unconscious of again when the rift in the cloud 
closes. Not having a strong imagination, I can only con- 
ceive of what comes under my immediate observation, and 
even then the conception soon vanishes. Coming fresh into 
an occupation like visiting the poor or like teaching, one 
always thinks that things might be much better done than 
they are done, and one expects to do them better. But the 
fact is, things are carried on by weary people, or at least by 
people who have only energy enough to get through their 
work somehow, and none to spare for improvements. Then, 
again, use makes us accept things without examining them. 
Just as phrases with which we are familiar lose their meaning 
to us, so do actions. Old hands in a school and elsewhere 
assume that they have to teach the new hands, and are mostly 
unconscious that they might lear?i from them too. The new 
hand or the interested outsider notices many a flaw to which 
the old stager has got so accustomed that he can't discern it 
or takes it for a grace. I should wish every new man to 
find fault freely and mention every criticism which occurred 
to him. Many of these will suppose a higher standard than 
could be maintained, some will be mistaken altogether, some 
will be impossible while men have a limited supply of energy 
and interest; but they will all tend to show the old hand 
that the established routine is not perfectly worked and is 
not the best conceivable. One of the most absolute facts 
in the constitution of most people is their utter inability to 
conceive of the condition of other people, or even of their 



Der Schlendrian 427 

own past conditions. When I was a boy I often went by 
the Wandsworth steamers, and I used to wonder what on 
earth the crew could find to talk about. Because I could 
think of nothing, it seemed to me as if they could find noth- 
ing ! And now at times one has an instantaneous glimpse 
of a condition of which the conception has otherwise been 
lost. To-day I visited a house with the knocker tied up, 
and instantly there flashed across me a remembrance of the 
state in which every little noise jars on the nerves and gives 
torture. In health such sensitiveness seems impossible." 



Restlessness 

"Tedium has been defined as a consciousness of time, 
just as in a morbid state one may become conscious of the 
throbbing of one's pulse. Having to wait at a railway station 
is a perfect torment to some people. For myself I remember 
this restlessness, which was very strong in me from about 
eighteen to eight-and-twenty. There was a constant craving 
to get on anyhow or any whither, only there must be no 
pause. I wonder how I should feel now if I were cut off 
from books, writing materials, and companions for some 
hours and were not travelling? I should be all right if 
some subject were buzzing in my head, as the Eastern Ques- 
tion has been lately, but without some such subject on which 
my thought settled naturally, I suspect I should be bored. 
I often grumble that I have no time to think. Should I 
think if I were condemned to solitary confinement for a 
week? What went on in men's minds when they were shut 
up in oubliettes? What goes on in the minds of sailors on 
watch or of sentries? Do they feel tedium, or does the mind, 
like the body, accommodate itself to the conditions in which 
it lives? " 



428 R. H. Quick 

The Law of Moral Gravitation 

"Whatever high aims a man sets out with, he constantly 
gravitates to lower aims. The statesman who begins by striving 
for the triumph of certain principles generally ends by thinking 
only of the parliamentary success of his party without the prin- 
ciples. Even a clergyman gets absorbed in his machinery and 
thinks very little of its effect. The schoolmaster, who at first 
had high views of training his pupils' minds and developing 
their powers and principles, thinks in the end of nothing but 
the Latin grammar." 

Nature and Nurture 

" So much rubbish is talked about following Nature that 
one is inclined das Kind mit dem Bad auszuschutten. But 
on no theory, least of all the Christian theory, would this be 
wise. The human educator, so far as he comes up to the 
true idea, is like the divine Educator. We find children's 
bodies are trained by employments in which children delight. 
Children are restless, so their muscles grow. They delight 
in hallooing, so their chests and lungs gain strength. The 
educator who recognised these facts and wished to follow and 
aid in this process might take one of two lines. He might 
say, 'The children's muscles and lungs must be properly exer- 
cised,' and so he might institute a sort of drill in running 
and shouting, or he might say, 'If the children only have 
the opportunity, they will run and shout enough,' so all he 
would do would be to provide the proper opportunity. The 
probability is that the second plan would be the more suc- 
cessful. But in the schoolroom we go on a different tack. 
One would certainly suppose that the mind, like the body, 
would be developed by exercise, and further that it would 
find pleasure in the exercise best suited for it; but we start 
with the assumption that boys will not like their work, and 



Nature and Nurture 429 

therefore we put them through it like a drill. Might not the 
educator draw the minds of his pupils into exercises which 
they seemed to take to proprio motu ? If he could do this, 
he would be strengthening minds as Nature strengthens bodies 
by running and shouting. But school-work at present almost 
always ignores all the faculties of the mind except the faculty 
of learning by heart or of carrying a certain amount of in- 
formation. The consequence is that the boys' imagination is 
exercised, not by the historian or biographer or geographer or 
poet, but by the novelist. And the analytical and reasoning 
powers are hardly exercised at all. All the reformers, I may 
say all the writers on education, keep on urging the drawing 
the faculties of the mind into exercise, but it is one thing lo 
urge it and another to do it. What I have always found is 
that the kind of truth which interests my mind does not in- 
terest boys. I shrewdly suspect that the only thing wanting 
is somehow to get the boys' minds at work upon it — but 
how? Suppose we are at work upon one of the Parables. 
I feel an interest in seeing how far the facts in the Parable 
are significant, and in comparing some parables like that of 
the Sower, where all the facts are significant throughout with 
that of the Unjust Judge, where one point only runs parallel 
to the truth taught. But my boys, though some of them 
would listen to what I said about this and would perhaps 
reproduce it, care no more about it than if it were abstruse 
logic. When I took boys in Shakespeare I utterly failed to 
interest them in the least. They didn't understand much, 
and didn't want to understand more; so the lesson was a 
bore to them and to me. On the other hand, a lesson in 
a foreign language gives something definite to do, and when 
it is tolerably easy the thing goes pretty smoothly. I have 
even succeeded in making a language lesson fairly interesting 
to small boys and beginners, but with the boys who are sup- 
posed to be more advanced 1 find, as usual, that the nuances 
which interest me have no attraction for them." 



430 R. H. Quick 



Interest in one's own notions 

"In the late discussions about statutes (Dec. '71) I was 
more struck than ever with the interest each man took in 
the grievance he himself had perceived and brought out, and 
the little interest he took in the grievances which his neigh- 
bour pointed out. Each admitted that the other men were 
right and each was ready to cooperate with the others, but 
no man went heart and soul into any point but his own. 
In the same way Abbott sees some defects in our primary 
education. I agree with him, and see a point of my own. 
He agrees in this, but I am much more interested in the 
matter I have seen for myself than in what Abbott has pointed 
out to me and vice versa. This seems universal. It is seldom 
indeed that you can get anyone to take up heartily what they 
have not themselves originated. This applies to education. 
What boys make out for themselves and feel to be their own 
is likely to remain theirs, but if the teacher communicates 
his thoughts the boys may possibly understand them, but 
they will not adopt them. I suppose the people of great 
influence are those who can lead others to see things for 
themselves, or who can feel things in such a way that other 
people must adopt them." 



Waste of Life 

"When one sees anything of family life, one is impressed 
terribly with the amount of waste there is in people's lives. 
A good deal which seems to an outsider waste is indeed 
unavoidable, and we cannot rightly apply the word to it. 
We see an orchard burst out into bloom in the spring. The 
beauty of the blossom is a kind of fruit, is at all events a 
gain in itself, like the grace and enjoyment of young lives, 
but the blossom and the grace and the happiness are soon 



Waste of Life 431 

over, and therefore we cannot rest in them but must look 
for something beyond. Some of the blossom (sometimes all) 
is nipped by frost, and even of the apples which approach 
perfection many never reach it. A high wind may tumble 
half of them when they are but half grown. Thus there are 
few that ever come to perfection. In our own lives too many 
of our days yield no fruit, and that from causes we cannot 
control j but what a fearful amount of waste! How many 
people seem to have no object except to get through life 
somehow, and with as little discomfort as may be. And 
those who wish to do useful work are often kept from it by 
feebleness of will and all sorts of small hindrances. Family 
life, and far more social life, seems to me full of waste. 
People come to see you, and the only thing is how to get 
through the time. Commonplaces that nobody wants to hear, 
music that everyone would gladly avoid hearing, are used 
simply to kill the time." 

Each in his own narrow cell 

"How thoroughly each man is engrossed by his own 
thoughts and his own doings, and how little we care for 
the thoughts and doings even of our most intimate asso- 
ciates ! This is a lesson one learns of course from others, 
and is unconscious of in one's own case; e.g. G. H. W. 
throws himself into writing a Greek inscription for a prize 
and rushes to me to admire it, though he knows I could 
not construe it without help, and can't in any case be a 
judge of its merits; yet anything that interests him so in- 
tensely must, he thinks, be interesting to others. But to-day 
at breakfast, when I told him that there was a short letter 
of mine in the Times, though he had the Times beside him, 
he did not even turn to it to see what the letter was about, 
and it is a great chance if he ever does. It's odd that what 
the Times people think interesting on general grounds, my 



432 R. H. Quick 

most intimate associate does not think worthy of a glance on 
general and personal grounds put together." 

Energy and Genius 

"'Genius,' says Matthew Arnold, following Carlyle, 'is 
an affair of energy. ' Both seem to look on genius as mere 
force, which may be applied in any direction. This surely 
requires great modification. Frederick II of Prussia and the 
first Napoleon had boundless energy that perhaps made them 
geniuses; but Frederick failed in literature, and so probably 
would Napoleon if he had attempted that line. Then again, 
Coleridge was a genius, but his friends would have smiled 
had anyone spoken of him as a man of energy. In his case 
he had force enough; he had a restless intellect, but the 
force was not under his control, he had no power of will. 
Some men seem to have immense power of action but no 
natural inclination to action; they must energise to call their 
power out. Dr Johnson was a man of this kind. In spite 
of M. Arnold and Carlyle, I am inclined to think that crea- 
tive genius differs in kind from ordinary people's faculties. 
But, putting creative genius aside, we find that the world is 
ruled by energy. What, then, should people do who are the 
very reverse of geniuses in this respect, people who have 
neither an innate impulse to think, nor a restless energy, 
nor a strong will which enables them to energise in any di- 
rection — people like myself, e.g. ? The only thing for them 
is very carefully to husband the little force they have and to 
apply it in the best direction. If by circumstance or choice 
they have much, or even a moderate amount of routine work, 
they must become mere social machines, for all their force 
will go into their routine work. If such a man has a wife 
and family, I suppose his force goes off in family matters. 
But if he can keep himself free from these things, which 
would be load enough for him, though a stronger animal 



The love of Truth 433 

might be hardly conscious of it, he may then look about 
him and occasionally give a useful hint to the workers. But 
Englishmen are never contented unless they are doing rou- 
tine work, they believe in nothing else. So I have gone on 
grinding away through the best half (and how much more 
perhaps!) of my working life, and it seems absurd for me to 
set up as a thinker and theoriser." 

The love of truth 

"Our Lord Himself has said, 'Ye shall know the truth, 
and the truth shall set you free.' Bacon says that the wooing 
of truth and the possession of truth form the sovereign good of 
human nature. But, speaking generally, no one wants the 
truth as such. Everyone values his knowledge or belief as 
a piece of private property. 

* To observations which ourselves we make 
We grow more partial for the observer's sake,' 

says Pope, and this desire to have Etwas Apai-tes, this 
feeling of Touchstone's when he says, 'A poor thing, Sir, but 
my own,' is much stronger than the love of truth. This 
feeling underlies most sectarianism. Supposing anybody were 
to tell V. a scientific fact that made against something in 
Genesis, V. would receive it with delight, but if it made 
the other way he would pooh-pooh it. It is not the truth 
about Genesis that he wants supported, but his opinion about 
Genesis. Of course it is just the same with almost all parties, 
Roman Catholic or Protestant, scientific or supernaturalist. 
I suppose, if a man cared about truth, he would be glad when 
anyone showed him he had been in error; but, as it is, you 
cannot annoy a man more than by proving him in the. wrong. 
The man is no more grateful to you than he would be if you 
proved his so-called Raphael a copy. This assertion of the 
Ego sometimes takes the oddest forms. ' Every Englishman 

2F 



434 R- H- Quick 

has a right to his opinions.' So he has a right to shut his eyes 
when he is crossing Cheapside, and yet it never strikes him 
that one right is just as valuable as the other. I have 
known self-assertion show itself in mispronouncing words. 
The speaker knew that persons quite sure to be right pro- 
nounced them one way, and this gave a special gusto to his 
pronouncing them differently. The pronunciation was then 
his, and he felt he was asserting himself every time he 
used it." 



The personal equation in truth 

"Above I have spoken of the power of the ego. One 
sees it in literature. J. H. Newman says, in his sermon on 
'Unreal Words, ' that literary men are allowed to say strong 
things without offence, because people feel that literature is 
divorced from action, and so understand that the writer does 
not mean what he says to be taken altogether in earnest. 
It is certainly the fact that literary men may and do write 
strong things without offence, but I doubt if Newman's ex- 
planation is the true one. 'Behold how great a matter a 
little fire kindleth, ' says St James, but in the intellectual 
world we often find that a great deal of fire fails to kindle 
a very little matter. The writer thinks of something and 
gets to take a personal interest in it. He is sure, not only 
of its truth, but of its extreme importance. He sees all sorts 
of consequences that must result from its announcement, and 
expects that it will be warmly welcomed by one party and as 
warmly opposed by the other. He has put his torch to the 
men of straw expecting a blaze, and he might as well have 
put it to a man of snow instead. Of course I am not 
speaking merely of my own experiences; these might easily 
have deceived me, and I might easily have taken heat for 
light: but I have observed great literary artists far over- 
estimate the effect that they expected from their writings. 



The subjective element in Truth 435 

Sometimes (very rarely) a writer produces a conflagration 
greater than he could have anticipated. This was no doubt 

the case with S . But, with all his marvellous literary 

skill, he can do nothing of the kind again. I remember he 
anticipated a stir from something he was about to publish 
on the Universities. He might as well have written on the 
court and camp of Esarhaddon. Lately he has tried his 
hand again at the old subject, but nobody seems to have 
attended. Preachers who have none of the arts of popu- 
larity, find that when they have been preaching what seemed 
to them full of life and fire, nothing of this has been felt 
by their audience; and perhaps, if they look at their own 
sermon after it has got cold, they wonder themselves how 
they could ever have been so interested in it. Truth, then, 
is interesting as a rule only when we regard it as our per- 
sonal property. The ego crops up everywhere. Of this the 
writer becomes aware if he touches, however delicately, on 
any personal matter. So long as his remarks are general, 
nobody will care much what he says; but if he speaks of 
living persons, he may be quite sure that somebody will care." 

Advantage of not being able to do things 

"This would not be a bad subject for an essay. Fawcett, 
had he not lost his sight, might have been nothing but a re- 
spectable country squire or J. P. This is, to be sure, doubt- 
ful, for he must have had a strong will to overcome difficulties, 
as he has. Still, if to the blind wisdom is at one entrance 
quite shut out, it is not wisdom only that is shut out. A 
thousand distractions are kept off also, and the mind can 
work up the materials it has, and is not buried beneath the 
heap like the girl in the Roman story, who was crushed by 
what she had bargained for. The light of day hides from 
us the stars. Generally speaking, illness disables mind as 
well as body, but when this is not the case it often seems a 



436 R. H. Quick 

clear gain. If I am sound in body and mind, I probably 
spend most of my time in doing things which are not worth 
doing, and going here and there with little or no occasion. 
The day seems over before it has well begun. But when 
I sprained my ankle the days seemed all of a sudden to 
be good long days again like the days of childhood, and I 
had time for reading and writing and thinking. We common- 
place people cannot resist the temptation to fritter away our 
time. The consequence is that while we do what it is our 
business to do, we never carry out anything else, we do not 
work at it continuously; we take up this or that, but it comes 
to nothing because we do not give it continuous attention. 
Any man who devoted himself to a good work, as a com- 
mon parish doctor devotes himself to the poor for ^200 
a year, would be thought a great philanthropist. Carlyle 
sneers at Howard and says, 'What was there so very ad- 
mirable in his prison visiting? He had nothing else to do, 
and many a doctor does just as much. You don't call 
every doctor a hero who works night and day among his 
patients when the cholera or smallpox is raging.' True 
enough, and yet there must have been something remarkable 
about Howard, for the common man may become such a 
doctor, but he cannot become a Howard." 

Truth 

"26. 5. 83. If one were attacked by a robber intent on 
taking one's life, and if one had a pistol in one's pocket, one 
would speedily produce it and point it at the robber. We 
should no doubt prefer the pistol to be loaded. It would 
serve our turn better, for if the man came on we might 
'prevent any such intention.' But if the pistol were not 
loaded, it would be far better than none; for the robber 
might think it was and slink away, in which case the sham 
weapon would have answered just as well as a real one. 



Individuals and classes 437 

"Now this, I think, represents fairly enough most people's 
regard for truth. They like truth certainly, if it will serve 
their purpose; nothing indeed is so good as the truth if it 
will do what they wish; but it is not truth they want, but a 
weapon or a tool or a something or other to do this or that 
with. So long as they can get the thing done, pen importe 
rhhelle; the unloaded pistol does just as well as the loaded. 
The Englishman's aims are always active, not speculative, so 
truth as such is little valued by us. 

"After all, I suppose, even Locke would have admitted 
that there are circumstances when it is better not to know 
the truth; and circumstances where, when we know it, we 
are not justified in telling it. If a novice had to descend 
from an Alpine height by a narrow path, he would probably 
be safe enough if he were in a mist and could only see for a 
few yards; but if the mist cleared off and he saw the precipice 
below him, he would get giddy and break his neck." 



Individuals and classes 

" In practice we think of ourselves and those nearest to 
us only as individuals, not as forming units of a class. Every 
man's good qualities and bad qualities we consider as his own 
and impute praise and blame accordingly, though perhaps the 
good or bad thing belongs not so much to the individual as 
to the class. 

"There was something very striking in the manner of an 
old friend of mine who has now been some years in the 
silent world, and I remember feeling almost annoyed when 
a brother of hers returned from India and I found his man- 
ner was just the same. What annoyed me was that I found 
what I had supposed part of the very self of my friend was 
simply an attribute of the family, like the surname. 

"Individualism seems at its highest point in modern 



438 R. H. Quick 

England. The Jews in the O. T. are hardly ever addressed 
as individuals; they are regarded simply as the nation." 

Individualism 

" 19. 12. 86. Most of our acts are as much settled for us 
as the shape and colour of our clothes. Take, e.g., church- 
going. We belong to a church-going class or we do not, 
and we go or do not go accordingly. Even our beliefs and 
opinions are not the result of our investigations. We assume, 
of course, that they correspond with the objective truth, but 
why should we think so? We know these beliefs and opinions 
would have been very different if we had been brought up in 
France or Italy or Russia. Is it likely that the beliefs and 
opinions current here are the sole, or even the very best, em- 
bodiments of the truth? So, in spite of the rubbish he is apt 
to talk about 'private judgment,' the Protestant Englishman 
marches along in the ranks and gives little play to individu- 
alism. And if he could 'leave the army' (which he can't), 
he would be a poor, helpless creature and be lost in the 
desert. Even in matters where we acknowledge our indi- 
vidual responsibility we practically seek to escape it by doing 
'what people usually do.' I, for instance, doubt whether the 
relation of master and servant is not too much the 'cash 
payment nexus.' I had views on this subject when I was a 
young man and propounded them to my father, who an- 
swered me that when I was older I should know better. I 
am older now, and I don't know better; but I know that, 
unless you are a person of very strong convictions and strong 
will, your treatment of servants is settled for you by the class 
to which you belong, and you are pretty certain to adopt 
laisser /aire. Even in the matter which interests me most 
nearly, the bringing up of children, I don't find myself 
breaking away much from use and wont. We must march 
along and engage the enemy, not as individuals, but as an 



Con trover sy 439 

army. Still, as in modern warfare there is some scope for 
individuality, and there is some difference between a good 
soldier and a bad one, between the man who makes a study 
of his calling, employing all his faculties in it, and the man 
who just does what all about him do. The first may im- 
prove; the second cannot." 



Controversy 

"27. 3. 84. Locke gives some advice for lengthening 
life. I forget whether he says 'Avoid controversy,' but he 
might say it. I had a controversy with Ridding, 1 in which 
Ridding seemed to me to cut a very poor figure. Talking 
to Hart the other day, Hart said of Ridding, 'Well, at all 
events, he can write.'' 'I thought,' said I, 'that was just the 
thing he could not do.' 'Oh, yes,' said Hart, 'don't you 
remember his letter about training of teachers ? ' Hart had 
entirely forgotten my share in the controversy, and remem- 
bered only how clever Ridding' s writing had been on that 
occasion. Of course Ridding had written on what Hart con- 
sidered the right side, so Hart thought what he said excel- 
lent. Nothing said on the other side was even remembered. 
This is the sort of thing that goes on in most controversies. 
No matter what you say, you are sure to be thought well of 
by the people who hold your opinions, and you make no 
impression at all on the opposite party. 

"I have just had a good instance of the absurdity of 
controversy. I ask a bookseller for explanation of a certain 
charge. He takes me for one of the public, and sends me 
an explanation which is none at all. I foolishly resolve to 
show him I know better than that, and write again. He re- 
plies angrily and sarcastically. Of course his sarcasm seems 
to me ridiculous, and nobody else will ever see it. By making 

1 The present Bishop of Southwell. 



440 R- H- Quick 

him angry I have closed his mind to the truth of anything I 
have said or could say. I am inclined to write again, but 
see on reflection that it would be mere waste. I hope never 
to engage in controversy, even in conversation, unless both 
parties are trying to get at the truth." 

What leads to distinction and eminence 

"There are two forces by which people become remark- 
able, and in extreme cases eminent; perhaps one might say 
three, though the boundaries are not very well defined. First, 
people become remarkable by having strong interests; e.g. I 
have known a man who took a strong interest in tramps. It 
was assignable to no particular cause. The man was not a 
philanthropist, and had no particular desire to improve the 
condition of tramps in any way, but he took an interest in 
that phase of life, and this interest led him almost irresistibly 
to investigate it. A strong interest of this kind must make 
a man remarkable, for he acquires a good deal of accurate 
knowledge on an out-of-the-way subject. Buff on has said 
that genius is nothing but a power of taking pains, and in- 
terests give this power. Certainly the chief characteristics of 
a man are his interests, and he is strong in proportion to 
the strength of these interests, and wise according to their 
direction. Interests lead to all kinds of involuntary action. 
But some people have an innate energy prior to interest, 
and, though of course taking its direction from interests, 
capable of working without them. To such men the pleas- 
ure of energizing is so great that anything they take up 
becomes interesting to them. Such men cannot help being 
a force in whatever circumstanes they are placed, and be- 
come remarkable or eminent according as they affect a small 
area or a large. The third force is the will itself. Strong 
will is, I take it, the most unusual distinction of the three. 
It is wonderful how insignificant a part the will plays in the 



Ambition 441 

lives of most of us. When we have no interests to guide 
us, no natural restlessness to keep us going, and where 
occupation is not afforded by the exigencies of life, we fall 
into inanition." 

Ambition 

"We often hear about a 'noble ambition,' and it is an 
understood thing that a noble ambition cannot be a selfish 
ambition, but I'm not sure that ambition does not connote 
selfishness. Clarkson, say, has a keen desire to free the 
slaves, but this cannot in the strict sense of the word be 
called ambition. I suppose ambition is the desire to dis- 
tinguish oneself. If one desires to be distinguished only by 
what is good, this may be called a noble ambition. If one 
longs to distinguish oneself anyhow, this is selfish ambition. 
But if a man does not care about being distinguished, he 
cannot be called ambitious; and yet he may, from a desire 
to do good, take the same line of action as if he were am- 
bitious. But alas! directly we cease to have any view to 
personal gain, we are at once in danger of being paralysed 
by don't-care-ism. We wish the welfare of others, and we 
think we see something we could do for them, so we set 
about it. But there is a sad want of energy in our endeav- 
ours, and at the least check we give up in disgust, saying, 
if people won't be helped we can't help it. Take, e.g., a 
man who wants to 'come before the public' I fancy I 
know of such a man. He settles upon a useful reform, and 
keeps preaching it in the newspapers till he gets something 
done. The public is benefited and so is he. But when I 
see a good thing I make one or two efforts to bring it to 
people's notice. These fail, and as I have no personal motive 
to spur me on, I give up. Unpaid labour may be good, but 
it is apt to be spasmodic and therefore less effective than paid 
labour, which keeps pegging away." 



442 R« H. Quick 

Tedium 

"25. 10. 79. At to-day's lecture papers were brought me 
from my class in answer to the question, 'What is tedium? 
Give instances from your own experience in the school-room. 
What remedies?' Only fifteen gave in answers, and these 
were not remarkable. The English in two or three cases is 
deplorable, and there were several instances of bad spelling. 

"The question was suggested by an article that appeared 
some years ago in the Spectator, 'What is tedium?' The 
Spectator says it is the consciousness of time. We ought to 
be as unconscious of the lapse of time as we are of the 
ticking of the clock. If the duration of time keeps forcing 
itself upon our notice, if time seems to go slowly, and we 
long to put the clock on, this state of feeling is tedium. 

"But a feeling of restlessness and a desire to hurry the 
clock may come from two causes : first, we may be dissatis- 
fied with present circumstances; second, we may be expecting 
something that we much wish for. We will suppose a number 
of boys are in school. One of the boys generally likes that 
particular lesson, but on the day we are considering he ex- 
pects his father at 12 o'clock to take him out for a pleasure 
trip. So the time seems to him to go slowly. Another knows 
he will be flogged at 12 o'clock, and, though he does not 
usually like the lesson, it seems on this particular day a very 
short one. Anything that engrosses the attention must pre- 
vent the consciousness of the duration of time. Mere lis- 
tening may be enough, but with the young listening becomes 
impossible when it ceases to give pleasure. The young want 
to be doing something." 

Use of fixed forms 

"W. Payne, the other night, was loud in praise of the 
stately old musicians who had a fixed form, a mould into 



The collecting mania 443 

which they threw their ideas, and at the same time he abused 
the moderns who had broken these moulds and, except in 
moments of higher inspiration, were formless. This use of 
a conventional mould is a subject of very wide extent. The 
politeness of the olden time was a mould of this kind. 
The gentleman or lady had their stately welcome and pretty 
speeches for every one. The new arrivals could infer nothing 
from the hosts' manner; this was the same for all. We have 
broken this mould and are often curt, and even rude, if we 
have no special reason to be the contrary. Again, in reading 
and preaching, if we adopt a studied manner, and that a 
good one, we are always bearable. But if we trust to the 
inspiration of the minute, we often fall into a manner which 
is detestable." 

The collecting mania 

"All boys are naturally collectors. The postage stamp 
mania is a proof of it. When I was at Dempster's there 
was a passion for pebbles, and by practice (we went on the 
beach a good deal) our eyes got wonderfully sharp in de- 
tecting them among common stones. This tendency to 'lay 
up treasure ' of some kind or other may be made most use- 
ful through life. Not to take the highest ground, we may 
consider the instinct as offering an escape from vacuity and 
ennui. Take the case of V. He seems to have nothing to 
look forward to. He has now a first-rate digestion and a 
faculty for dawdling about without feeling bored. If he ever 
looks ahead, he can see nothing before him but the gradual 
failure of this perfect digestive faculty, and meantime he seems 
rather to resemble the ancient philosopher who did not kill 
himself only because 'it would be just the same.' But if V. 
became a collector of books or coins or autographs, he- would 
have an interest in something and would occasionally have a 
consciousness of gaining something, whereas now every day 
must leave a feeling of loss. 



444 1?- H. Quick 

"Collectors in another sense we all are. As we grow 
older we lay up a store of associations, a store much vaster 
than we have any conception of, but almost everything we 
see, each place we visit, reminds us of something, and we 
become ourselves mere collections of past impressions, and 
the events of the day do little but revive this or that impres- 
sion received long ago. As Goethe said in his old age, 

' Was ich besitze seh 1 ich wie im Weiten, 
Und was verschwand wird mir zu Wirklichkeiten.' " 



Obstacles to reform 445 



VARIA 

Artists looking at their own works 

"23. 3. 86. Millais' pictures are now on show at the 
Grosvenor Gallery. How strange it must seem to him to 
walk through this collection of the main works of his life ! 
How each picture must carry him back into the past and 
remind him of thoughts and feelings and efforts which have 
long passed away ! In one picture he must see his triumph 
over difficulties which for a time seemed insuperable, in an- 
other he may note defects due to this or that obstruction 
or to mere weariness or negligence. The outcome of it all 
passes before him as a panorama. To him these are not 
pictures as they are to us; they are his past self. Perhaps 
some day our works may come before us again. We may 
see our successes and ©ur failures and find that every genuine 
effort told for good far more than we ventured to hope, and 
that every negligence and every yielding to our lower nature 
left defects that never can be remedied. (17. 8. 87.) I find 
from J. E. R. that Millais expressed to a friend some thoughts 
like the above." 



Why reforms are rare and tardy 

"27. 7. 80. I have just sent off the above letter. 1 It is 
amusing to observe the difference between oneself now and 
twenty years ago. In those days diffidence would have pre- 
vented my even thinking of writing, but I should have had 

1 A letter to Lord Spencer, President of Council, suggesting a way for 
encouraging good reading in elementary schools by awarding an extra 
grant for excellence. 



446 R. H. Quick 

such immense belief in my plan that I should have expected 
it to be adopted directly it was heard of. Now I expect it 
to do no good at all. We elderly people have so little faith 
in our plans succeeding that we don't get up energy enough 
to propose them ; or, if we do propose them, it is with the 
feeling that we ought to do our part, though probably nothing 
will come of it. 

"'Much must still be tried which shall but fail.' I see 
two reasons of failure which I should not have expected when 
I was younger. First I have a suspicion that my plan is 
not nearly such a good one as it seems to me. We all tre- 
mendously overrate the value of whatever has suggested itself 
first to us. So more impartial eyes may see defects which I 
cannot see, and perhaps could not even be brought to see. 
Next, even if my plan were as good as I think it, there is a 
great want of receptivity in all our minds (or nearly all) to 
take in any suggestions of other people's, which proves an 
insuperable obstacle to most improvements. If such a plan 
came into the head of Lord Spencer himself, it probably 
would be received so coldly by the permanent officials that 
he would give it up. If it occurred to Sir F. Sandford he 
would no doubt carry it through, but then these people who 
administer and are supposed to understand things are just 
the people who have got to look on the present system 
as the only thing possible, and so are the last people in 
the world to whom new ideas are likely to occur. We old 
people then see how hard it is to get anything changed. 
We know too that changes, when effected, are often dis- 
appointing. So we find lots of excuses to back up our 
laziness." 

Reflections on Tidying 

"24. 4. 82. Tidying always brings sad thoughts. One 
stumbles on so many things that remind one of interests or 
efforts that seem to have passed away, to have died and 



Tidying 447 

been forgotten. All the early part of life is spent in looking 
forward, but then we change our place and ride with our 
backs to the horses. We have nothing better to expect as 
far as the world goes. We should like to keep as we are, 
but we know this is impossible, and every change will be a 
loss. When the truth forces itself upon us we have need to 
listen to our Saviour's ' Believe in God, believe also in Me.' 
Another thing tidying brings home to weak people like me 
is the too-muchness of everything. There are hosts of subjects 
I should like to go into, hosts of books I should like to 
read. As a young man one expected to find time for all 
or most of these different subjects and perhaps accumulated 
books to read 'some day,' but now one feels pretty certain 
one will go on grinding in some narrow groove till the time 
comes when energy ceases, so that one has to give up many 
of the things that one seemed to have in posse before one 
loses what is ours in esse." 

Sehnsucht 

"An untranslatable word, but Longfellow has paraphrased 
it well, though he takes a whole stanza to do it : — 

' A feeling of sadness and longing 
That is not akin to pain, 
And resembles sorrow only 
As the mist resembles rain. 1 " 

From Goethe (?) 

" As all Nature's thousand changes 

But one changeless God proclaim, 
So in Art's wide kingdom ranges 

One sole meaning, still the same : 
This is Truth, eternal Reason, 

Which from Beauty takes its dress, 
And serene through time and season, 

Stands for aye in loveliness. 1 ' 



44-8 R. H. Qiiick 



Fro 7n Martial 

"Though the plan, Sir, was mine and you'd no right to 
bone it, 
Now I see the result, I'm not likely to own it." 

Various readings in MS. 

" In reading foreign editions of English books one gets to 
see the sort of blunders the copyists of MSS. would make in 
their own time : — 

1 1 dare do all that may become a man 
Who dares to move is none.' 

1 Next Camus reverend sire came fooling slow.' 

I have observed the same sort of thing with schoolboys. That 
the connected words should have any meaning for them is by 
no means essential, but they insist that every word shall have 
a meaning for them by itself." 

A fly's notion of Paradise 

"A place where it would be blazing hot and the cows 
would have no tails." 

"6. io. 87. Professor Voigt writes to ask me if 'Giving 
the pick of the peasants a higher education ' can mean 'Send- 
ing peasants who work with the pick to the university.' " 

"Some people think of boys as men seen through the 
wrong end of the telescope." 

" We praise people, not for doing what they are inclined 
to do, but what they do contrary to their inclination from a 
sense of duty. If this rule is right, we often give unde- 
served praise to energetic people. We say, 'Look at that 
lazy scoundrel Donothing loafing about with his hands in his 
pockets. Why don't he work like his cousin Mugger, who 
slaves away in his shop from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. ? ' Why, Mugger 



Varia Liter aria 449 

would be as wretched dawdling about in the sun as Donothing 
would be slaving behind the counter." 

"12. 8. 85. People who carry on several pursuits at the 
same part of their lives seem to me like jugglers who keep 
up five or six balls. I look on with amazement, and when 
I feebly try to imitate them with two balls, one of them 
speedily comes to the ground." 

" What we see depends not so much on what is before our 
eyes as on what is behind them." 

"Wisdom cried of old, 'I am the mother of fair love, and 
fear, and knowledge, and holy hope.' Ecclus. xxiv. 18. But 
in this age of science knowledge seems the sole survivor. 
Like another Cain, he has risen up against his brethren, fear 
and holy hope, and slain them, and fair love has died of grief." 

" We have no more right to keep boys without a play- 
ground than ducks without a pond. This is true of mental 
playground as well as bodily." 

"Good learners as a rule make poor teachers. The ac- 
tivity and nimbleness of mind which make them take things 
in quickly, also make them impatient of the slower processes 
of ordinary learners." 1 

"We all want to have truth on our side, but few indeed 
want to be on the side of truth. If truth is likely to appear 
on the opposite side, we pretend to look for her; but, like 
Nelson, we put the telescope to the blind eye." 

VARIA LITERARIA 

C. S. Calverley 

"Kingsley called here yesterday and seemed almost ner- 
vous. Maurice used to be the same, yet what difference 
could an ordinary man's opinion make to them? Calverley, 
on the other hand, is reckless of opinion. A small anecdote 
illustrates this. He was examining, at Cheltenham, I think. 
At the proper time he did not appear. There was a dead 

2G 



450 R. H. Quick 

pause for a long time; nobody knew what had happened. 
At length Calverley appeared. He observed to the head- 
master that he should have been earlier, but that after break- 
fast he had inadvertently lighted a cigar." 

READING 

II y a fagots et fagots 

"I have just finished Forster's Life of Dickens. Reading 
some books is like going down hill — you can hardly stop. 
Reading others is like going up hill, and the ascent some- 
times becomes so very steep that further progress becomes 
impossible. I don't often read the down-hill books, which 
consist mostly of good fiction. It would, perhaps, be better 
for me if I did, for in consequence of always going up hill 
I get accustomed to very slow action. A run down hill 
would raise my spirits, and I dare say prove no loss of time 
in the end. Forster's book is very good down-hill reading 
with much 'skip ' in it. 

"Some people speak of ' reading' as if books were all of 
one kind. But books are really our guide into the world of 
imagination and the world of thought. Few indeed can pass 
into either of these worlds alone; and, though called by the 
same name, the mental process in following one author is 
utterly different from that required in following another. We 
read the light novel, which would pall if we attempted to 
look at it the second time; and we read the sonnet weighty 
with meaning in every word, so weighty that we understand 
nothing perhaps at the first reading, and know it by heart 
before we have mastered it. Hobbes of old, and Robertson 
a few years ago, spoke of the evils of much reading. They 
surely should have said what reading they meant. Of course 
light reading is not above other amusements, but reading 
that must be study does not belong to the same category. 
Matthew Arnold lately took me to task for the way I spent 
my time at Harrow, and found great fault with me for not 



Literary Style 451 

making a point of reading. It is odd that the thing which 
I ought to do, and which it is the greatest pleasure of my 
life to do, I always postpone to other things in such a way 
that in effect it falls through altogether." 

Literary Style. Hallam 

"I have not read much of Hallam, and my judgment may 
be too hasty, but I seldom read a page without disgust. He 
always seems to me giving himself elaborate airs of impar- 
tiality, and offering as a judgment of the supreme court of ap- 
peal small observations quite on the surface of things and 
quasi-impartial from their being safe and see-saw. 

"Locke 'turned his thoughts to education with all the 
advantages which a strong understanding and entire disin- 
terestedness could give him; but, as we should imagine, with 
some necessary deficiencies of experience, though we hardly 
perceive much of them in his writings.' How safe and silly 
all this is ! When a man writes for publication he easily 
falls into an easy, glib way of saying things, and his style 
becomes like his company manners. It is intended to be 
proper and decorous, but this manner conceals our real selves 
and our sham selves are insipid and uninteresting. 

"I have at times fancied that my 'style' had suffered 
from so much note-book scribbling. In this, of course, I 
have never thought of expression, but have just jotted down 
what I had to say in the first words that came. This has 
made me write in short sentences, and I can now write no 
other. But, after all, it is better to be jerky and undignified 
than to write in the literary way. When a man can entirely 
fling away literary form and just say in the most direct manner 
what he thinks, he is generally interesting." 

Effect of keeping a Diary on Style 

" 16. 9. 85. It is a matter of considerable interest to me 
how far I have done myself good, how far the reverse, by 
writing in note-books. On the one hand I suppose I have 



452 R. H. Quick 

gained in- the power of saying what I want to say without 
affectation or circumlocution. But is distinctness the only, or 
even the main, essential of diction? Our form of expression 
naturally differs according to the person addressed." 

Literary Style, Adagio, Largo, &c. 

"I don't know whether anybody has made the observa- 
tion, but writing might be marked like music, adagio, largo, 
&c, up to prestissimo. However, it is not necessary to mark 
it, a few sentences will decide. The metaphor is not quite 
satisfactory, as the reader is carried on or delayed without 
being conscious of it. Macaulay is the greatest writer I know 
of the rapid style. Writing, to carry the reader along, must 
be pleasant to him, but there is a good deal of pleasant 
reading which is not of the rapid kind. Carlyle, in his earlier 
essays (his later work is abnormal), gives admirable speci- 
mens of this more thoughtful writing. Here the thought is 
not beaten out, so that he who runs and reads may under- 
stand, but every sentence gives up its meaning, somewhat 
slowly, but not too slowly, and every word seems chosen with 
care, and therefore to deserve care in reading. In poetry 
Scott is perhaps the best of the presto writers. Byron, too, 
is good. Tennyson's Idylls are medium, but much of his 
other poetry, especially In Memoriam, belongs to a class of 
reading which cannot be read straight off with any under- 
standing at all. A great deal of poetry and some prose 
cannot be made out without study, and therefore can never 
be popular. People who only read things once would not 
get far into Shakespeare's Sonnets. Of poor writing one may 
say that it does not flash its meaning on the reader, and bores 
him if he gives the time necessary to take it in. After all, how 
little writing there is that one reads with pleasure ! 

" I have spoken above about rapid style. How a man is 
tested by being read in excerpts. Most writing tastes as vapid 
as porter in a tea-spoon, but careful writing like Carlyle's 
stands the test like fine wine." 



Swift 453 

On a bit of chalk 

"It has often struck me what power is given to any ordi- 
nary mortal by the possession of a bit of chalk. He may 
scribble up 'No Popery' and send a thrill of Protestantism 
through half the country. He may scrawl 'Dizzy forever ' 
and seem to give proof that the lower orders are conservative. 
Or he may outrage decency and make the intelligent foreigner 
believe that English decorum is a mere outer varnish. By 
virtue of the bit of chalk the man or the boy becomes a repre- 
sentative person and speaks for the whole neighbourhood. 

"And in these days of anonymous journalism the pen often 
serves the most insignificant persons as a bit of chalk. The 
man who writes in the newspapers is often no wiser than other 
people, but everything he says is read far and wide and goes 
for much more than it is worth." 

Swift 

"Swift's letter to Bolingbroke, in which is the often quoted 
passage about his ambition 'to be used like a lord ' is dated 
April 5, 1729. I can't help thinking we are hard upon him 
if we take him at his word. When a man lets disappointment 
or ill-temper vent itself in cynicism, he soon gets to speak in 
character, so to say. His real self is lost in the part he has 
taken up. A case in point is Bartle Massey in Adam Bede, 
a man with a kind heart who has been crossed in love, and 
so sets up for a woman-hater. Nobody would suppose that 
everything such a man says is to be taken as the sober ex- 
pression of conviction. He has assumed a part, and much 
that he says proceeds simply from his sense of dramatic pro- 
priety. Swift in like manner assumed the cynic, and if we 
would judge him fairly we must not be in a hurry to pass 
sentence simply because he has pleaded guilty." 

New York School Journal 

"There is a terrible want of dignity and self-restraint — of 
gentlemanliness, in fact — ■ about these Americans. The editor 



454 R- H- Quick 

puffs his paper and the advertisers puff their wares like so 
many cheap-jacks." 

French mots 

"What a calamity to a nation to have fallen into the habit 
of coining such phrases as 'L'empire c'est la paix. ' Michelet 
abounds in these — e.g. 'La terre c'est la liberte.' (He says 
elsewhere, 'La liberte c'est l'homme,' whence we may infer 
that 'La terre c'est l'homme.') These phrases save both 
reader and writer the trouble of thinking, but they are 
merely flash notes on the bank of truth, and when they are 
presented they will not be cashed." 

Originality in a writer 

"The question I have been revolving lately, how far an 
author should use what has been said before, and how far 
he may avoid references to authorities, is one which extends 
in many directions. As M. Arnold says, we need culture, 
and culture is knowing the best that has been thought and 
written. Whatever subject one goes into then, one should 
know what has already been done in it. I am at work on 
the Epigram. Seeley tells me to look up Lessing, and there 
I find a thorough discussion of the Epigram. I am writing 
an essay on Lyric Poetry. If I take up a standard book, 
Gervinus say, I expect I shall find everything I could think 
(and of course a vast deal more) already said. And, as I 
am no Lessing or Gervinus, I should of course consult best 
for my readers by simply looking up the subject in standard 
authorities and summing up with or without acknowledgment 
what Lessing and Gervinus have said. This will be the most 
useful work for the ordinary man to do. The great thinkers 
may work independently, or study Lessing and Gervinus, and 
advance on what they have left us. All this seems straight- 
forward enough; and, if one is well posted in a subject, one 
laughs to see a writer's first crude notions trumpeted as dis- 



Literary Originality 455 

coveries. And yet there are few minds in which the truly 
vigorous thoughts are not the autochthonic. Those which 
are naturalised exist on sufferance, and have little 'go ' in 
them. If I come fresh to the consideration of the Epigram 
or the Lyric, I strike a few thoughts which may be in part 
erroneous, and are safe to have been anticipated if true. 
But these thoughts have vitality in them, and when I ex- 
press them there will be some freshness and vigour in the 
expression. But if, instead of thinking for myself, I read up 
the subject, I may say what is much better worth saying, 
but I may show by my manner that I am not a voice, but 
merely an echo." 

Coleridge's Plagiarism 

" Seeley, talking of Coleridge, said that he probably never 
plagiarised wittingly. Thompson, the Master of Trinity, told 
Seeley that on one occasion a friend of his lent Coleridge a 
Jeremy Taylor and received it back with the margins filled 
as usual. Some time afterwards Coleridge quoted a passage 
as Jeremy Taylor's which proved not to be Jeremy Taylor's, 
but Coleridge's own written in the margin." 

Disraeli's Plagiarisms 

"15. 7. 87. C. Mackay's Autobiography. 

"It was when Mackay was editor of the Morning Chronicle 
that Dizzy's plagiarisms were pointed out in the Chronicle, viz. 
that in his obituary oration on the Duke of Wellington (1852), 
and in his character of Lord Cadurcis taken straight from 
Macaulay's Essay on Byron, then buried in the Edinburgh 
Review. In his oration Dizzy, as I remember, was affected 
to Thiers (it's a pity this pun comes thirty-five years too 
late). Thiers had spoken it eighteen years before at the grave 
of Marshal Mortier. A friend of Dizzy's wrote to say both 
passages had been copied into a common-place book without 
reference, and Dizzy had mistaken them for his own." 



45 6 R. H. Quick 

Macaulay 's Johnson 

"I have been reading Leslie Stephen' sjo/mson, and I was 
inclined to think it an improvement on Macaulay, but last 
night I took up Macaulay 's Essay and could not put it down. 
For Stephen I have a great liking, and I think him full of 
good sense. Macaulay, you may say, is a mere literary artist, 
and sacrifices sense and everything else to effect; but after 
all, how absurd is the attempt to depreciate Macaulay! 
Leslie Stephen seems purposely to have ignored Macaulay' s 
Essay, and has just a passing allusion to Macaulay's style, 
which he speaks of as his snip-snap. It won't do ! Macaulay 
is one of the great artists whom we must acknowledge as such 
if we do not want to make ourselves ridiculous. Stephen has 
selected his material very well and given a capital account of 
Johnson, but it is after all a compilation. Macaulay does not 
seem to collect material at all. Johnson and all his associates 
seem familiar to Macaulay. 1 The material has been fused by 
his imagination, and is no longer a collection of anecdotes; 
Macaulay makes you know Johnson as Thackeray makes you 
know Major Pendennis. You feel that he might tell you 
ever so much more if he chose, but he tells you just what 
you want to know, and that's all. As for 'snip-snap,' the 
style is admirable; there is a perfect flow about it. Stephen 
might point out a lot of full-stops, but that doesn't matter 
a pin. What you must judge by is not the printing, which 
nobody need think of but the printer, but the effect on the 
mind of the reader, and to my mind at least there is nothing 
jerky in Macaulay's sketch of Johnson. 

1 So Scott writes of himself and his imitators : — " One advantage, I 
think, I still have over all of them. They may do their fooling with better 
grace; but I, like Sir Andrew Aguecheek, do it more natural. They have 
to read old books and consult antiquarian collections to get their know- 
ledge; I write because I have long since read such works, and possess, 
thanks to a strong memory, the information which they have to seek for." 
— Journal, I. 275. 



J. R. See ley on Style 457 

" I have since read his Addison, but I know the essay too 
well, and Macaulay will not bear reading again and again, at 
least by adults. The clever passage in which he says that 
Pope learnt the trick of smooth versification and taught it to 
everybody, so that since the appearance of the Pastorals we 
are as little disposed to admire a man for making smooth 
verses as for writing his own name, is taken straight away from 
Warton without acknowledgment. 

"'Upon the whole the principal merit of the Pastorals of 
Pope consists in their correct and musical versification, musical 
to a degree of which rhyme could hardly be thought capable, 
and in giving the first specimen of that harmony in English 
verse which has now become indispensably necessary, and 
which has so forcibly and universally influenced the public 
ear as to have rendered every moderate rhyme melodious.' 
Warton' s Essay on Genius of Pope, vol. 1. p. 10." 

Letter from Seeley on Style 

"3 June, '79. The other day, in writing to J. R. Seeley, 
I spoke of some lecture of his in which he implied that 
the 'interesting' school of historians began with Scott and 
Macaulay. I said, the ancients must have endeavoured to 
be interesting, for they paid great attention to style; and 
Sallust, at the beginning of the Catilines, says it is as hard 
to write history as to make it, for the style is equal to the 
things done. 

"To this Seeley answers: — 'I am much struck with your 
remark about historical style. You say the ancients must 
have tried to make their histories readable because they 
thought so much about style. No doubt Herodotus did 
before history proper was invented; no doubt some Latin 
historians did, even Tacitus at times, because scarcely any 
Roman ever knew what he would be at in literature. But 
I do not think it would be fair to say of Tacitus that this 



458 R. H. Quick 

(i.e. to make his book readable) was a main object with 
him, and it would be utterly unfair to say of Thucydides, 
who of all the ancients is the one real model in history. 
But I am struck with the assumption you make that the 
object of style is to make a book readable, because I have 
met the same assumption in almost all the reviews of Stein. 
According to me style is a wholly different thing, and in 
history attention to style does not make a book more read- 
able, but to a certain extent less so. The fault of Macaulay 
is that he does not think of style enough. Style seems to 
me a certain correspondence between the words and the 
subject-matter. When a book consists of rigorous investiga- 
tion, and has for its main object to dissipate illusions and 
give a trustworthy view of what happened, there can be no 
greater violation of the law of style than that it should be 
written in the diction of romance. Historical style should 
be real prose, and, what is more, impersonal prose. To write 
it well is very difficult, and the principal difficulty of it is to 
get rid of colour and literary varnish of all kinds. Unaffected 
simplicity, chastity, transparent clearness joined with brevity, 
these are the proper marks of the historical style. I have 
been very much struck in reading the criticisms on 'Stein ' to 
observe that a style of this sort seems to English critics the 
very negation of a style. I wonder what they would say to 
Caesar if he appeared now for the first time ! I was par- 
ticularly proud of the style of 'Stein ' and thought I had made 
quite a discovery, and one or two readers have seen what I 

aimed at; e.g. Fred M writes that it is such a delight to 

read a style so strong, simple and masterly. I like these 
epithets; they are just those I hoped to deserve. I was not 
greatly surprised to find several reviewers not seeing anything 
of this; but it does take me aback to find not a single re- 
viewer betraying that he ever heard of simplicity as a high 
literary merit, or that he ever knew that in some sorts of 
composition the negative virtues were much more important 
than the positive ones." 



Smollett 459 



Smollett 

"29 July, 1879. The other day, at Stachelberg, I looked 
through Peregrine Pickle. There are all sorts of blemishes, 
artistic and other, in the book, and it is far inferior to 
Humphry Clinker. But Smollett's extreme carelessness about 
plot has this advantage, that he runs off to give you his views 
on this and that. I fancy Hogarth had much influence on 
Smollett, and that Smollett tried to be a literary Hogarth. 
Like Hogarth, he succeeds in making human life revolting. 
I have been told of an odd boy who, on a journey, pointed 
out to his aunt a number of disgusting sights. At length 
she said, 'Alfred, you see nothing but what is disgusting.' 
'O yes,' said Alfred, 'I see everything, but I only point out 
what is disgusting.' This youth ought to have turned out 
a Hogarth or a Smollett. Peregrine himself is a mere lay 
figure. He goes to school at Winchester, but one can't gather 
much from the Winchester or Oxford part except that it was the 
custom then to send boys both to the public schools and to 
the Universities with a 'governor.' This plan was not quite 
abandoned when I was a boy. Lord Hopetoun was at Harrow 
with a tutor, and had a house taken for him, I think." 

Unscrupulousness of newspapers 

"6. 11. 80. In to-day's Spectator is a singular instance of 
our newspaper people. The editor of the Spectator quarrelled 
with Seeley about the election of a professor at University 
College, London, when the former backed James Martineau 
and the latter Croom Robertson. What is the consequence? 
In this month's Macmillan, as I have said above, is a paper 
of Seeley' s which is certainly one of the most important that 
has appeared in a magazine for a long time. It points out 
the dangers we are exposed to from our ignorance of political 
science, and from studying history in the writings of mere 



460 R. H. Quick 

literary men who care nothing for political science, but think 
only of effective portraiture. The subject is a most important 
one ; Seeley is thoroughly master of it, and is one of our 
very ablest writers. In this article, too, he has put out 
his strength. Yet the Spectator, in noticing 'Articles in the 
magazines,' never mentions the paper at all ; and, for fear it 
should be supposed to have overlooked it, writes, 'We have 
been unable to discover any other paper of mark, though 

Mrs gives in Macmillan an account of — [a bogey in 

Ceylon, a very common-place ghost story], ' so that, without 
mentioning Seeley, it manages to say that Seeley's paper is 
not worth mentioning. And the Spectator prides itself on its 
fairness ! " 

Tennyson 's Rizpah 

"12. 12. 80. Haslemere. Mr William Barnes (aged 65) 
has just told me the following. When he was seven he saw 
the corpses of the two Tilleys, who were hanged at Horsham 
and gibbeted on the road between this and Midhurst for 
robbing the mail at North Heath. There was a story that 
the mother collected the bones. They were a family living 
near Lurgashall. This story no doubt Tennyson has heard. 
Hence Rizpah just published." 

Translation 

" ' A literal translation is better than a loose one, just as 
a cast from a fine statue is better than an imitation of it. 
For copies, whether of words or things, must be valuable in 
proportion to their exactness.' U. 

" Here we have a saying more witty than wise. A cast 
gives the exact shape, though in an inferior material, but a 
literal translation does not always convey the exact thought. 
Besides, in a fine literary work there is beauty of thought 
and beauty of expression. In the statue there is one beauty 
only. If the expression in the translation is uncouth, the 



Translation 46 1 

thought must be precious indeed, or the translation will be 
unreadable. 'The copy should be like the original.' Yes, 
but it is not like the original if the language is idiomatic in 
the one and barbarous in the other. Similes like that of the 
cast and the copy sound well, but are of no intrinsic value. 
It is just as much to the point to say that a man skilled in 
portraits can give us a truer conception of a profile than a 
man who goes to work with a silhouette instrument. 

" There are really two kinds of translation. In the one 
the translator professes to be in the confidence, so to speak, 
of the original author, to know exactly what he means, and 
therefore be at liberty to vary the expression, so long as the 
meaning is completely and accurately given. But in other 
translations, e.g. that of the Bible, the translators confess 
that they transmit signs which they at best only understand 
in part. In Ireland I was once shown an old inscription in 
stone on an estate of one of the Guinesses. As the inscrip- 
tion was getting worn out, the proprietor had employed some 
common mason to cut it deeper. The mason, not knowing 
even the Erse characters, had cut with the best intention no 
doubt, but had in fact destroyed the inscription. Our trans- 
lators try to avoid a similar mistake. They wish to preserve 
the signs intact, and leave the interpretation of them." 

A and Llewelyn Davie s 



" It is interesting to observe how men differ in the range 
of their interests, i.e. in the range of their receptivity, for we 
acquire only so far as we are interested. 

" One of the ablest men and best workers I know gets to 
have a splendid accuracy of knowledge in the area on which 
he has worked, but shows astonishing ignorance when you go 
a step beyond. 

" A competent viva voce friendly critic said to me that A.'s 
mind was furnished almost entirely by Bacon and Shakespeare ; 



462 R. H. Quick 

he might, of course, have added the Bible. The critic has 
picked up far more in the world of books, but he despises 
everything not first-rate ; so, astonishing as his knowledge of 
great authors is, he is less well acquainted with the small 
fry than many ordinary people. About common matters not 
connected with literature he is as ignorant as a child. Here 
he presents a marked contrast to our common friend Llewelyn 
Davies, whose power of picking up is very great — he seems to 
know most things and everybody. But then these first-rate 
men do not know half as much about the minutiae of our 
material surroundings as another friend of mine who can 
hardly read." 

Me7iioir of Daniel Macmillan, by Thomas Hughes 

" 18. 2. 83. Daniel Macmillan was in himself well worthy 
of a memoir, and Hughes has done his work excellently, 
allowing D. M. to tell his own story in his letters and diary. 

"Private letters and diaries have many advantages (with 
some drawbacks) over what is written for publication. The 
Devonshire people will not drink ' manufactured ' cider, i.e. 
cider prepared for the London market. I, too, like the juice 
of the apple pure and simple, though it is apt to be ' hard.' 
Directly we begin to write for the public we cannot help 
posing, just as we do when we see the photographer bury 
his head in the black cloth. It seems almost impossible to 
say just what we think and have done with it. On the other 
hand our jottings for ourselves or in letters are mostly hurried, 
and one sees the want of continuous effort. The English is 
often jerky and scrappy. Macmillan's English is now and then 
jerky, but it is wonderfully clear and good." 

Thomas Chenery 

"4. 3. 84. Chenery was one of the few celebrities I have 
known, and it may be worth while recording what he seemed 



Thomas Chenery 463 

on the side which was the only one exposed to my view. 
He was my friend Anderson's great friend, great from his 
Times connection, not his friendship. Anderson and he had 
been at Cams together, and, being both some years older 
than the other undergraduates, had naturally been thrown 
much in each other's society and had formed an odd sort of 
connection which lasted to the end. 

" About the year '69 I saw a good deal of Chenery at 
Brighton. He was a short, thick-set, very short-necked man, 
with a remarkably dejected expression, a somewhat shy man- 
ner, and a rather sententious way of speaking. Since he has 
been made much of in society I have heard of his ' courtly 
manners,' and the Times people speak (now at least) of his 
kindliness and consideration for his subordinates. This all 
seems a joke to those who knew him at home, and at home 
only. To me he was always civil, even friendly ; but he 
gave me the impression of being by nature harsh and ill- 
tempered, and he was always (probably from over-concen- 
tration when at work) rather listless and dejected. He was 
ready to chat on any subject, but seemed interested in 
nothing, and always took the sceptical and nil admirari line. 
His real interest, of course, lay in Arabic and Hebrew, in 
which he became really great. His work he managed to 
do without ever seeming to do it. He showed in conver- 
sation no special knowledge of the affairs of the day, and 
even less than ordinary interest. I knew quite well that he 
was high on the Tunes staff, as I had heard Butt (now a 
judge) say that he had just been with Delane, and Delane 
had mentioned Chenery as the best man he knew for writing 
on the spur of the moment From this special talent Chenery 
was in the habit of staying in the office to write the article 
on any late debate. Except to men with whom he was more 
intimate than me, he always spoke about the Times as an 
outsider ; he did not at all avoid talking of the Times, but 
he said just what anyone might have said, though of course 



464 R- H. Quick 

he knew that I knew he was on it. He was an eccentric. 
When I first became acquainted with him he had taken a 
house in Eaton Place, which however he never furnished 
except on the ground-floor. Here he worked hard (he was 
translating the ' Assemblies of Harin ' at the time) some eight 
hours a day. He then went out to dine, thence to the Times 
office, where he wrote his article some time in the night. 
How a man who was engrossed in such work as the ' Assem- 
blies of Harin ' could have picked up knowledge enough to 
write on the topics of the day was to me a marvel. He 
must have had a strange power of concentrating his mind 
on any set task. His ambition was to become known in 
Germany as an Arabic scholar, and in this he succeeded. 
With this taste and lots of money he took the editorship of 
the Times, in which people say he did not succeed, and he 
slaved at this till he killed himself. (He died at the age of 
56, and left ^20,000.) A melancholy fate ! What a hero he 
would have been thought if he had thus sacrificed himself with 
a nobler motive." 

Quarterly Review on Tennyson 

"14. 3. 84. I have just been reading the Quarterly Re- 
view's first notice of Tennyson (April, 1833). It is a great 
literary curiosity. The reviewer sat down, not of course to 
speak the truth, but to ridicule a man whom he took for a 
poetaster. On the whole, we are forced to the conclusion 
that he must have been a very shrewd person who ought to 
have formed a truer judgment, but the Quarterly Review had 
taken up the role of putting down pretenders in poetry, and 
having snuffed out Keats, it set to work to do the same by 
Tennyson. The writer takes up the line of much praise, and 
fastens with wonderful skill on the weak things in the volume, 
which it praises as the beauties. Tennyson has altered or 
expunged almost everything quoted. Here we see what a 



Ruskin 465 

crime it is to write for anything but truth. A man with 
much critical acumen reviews some of the finest poems in 
the language, and, because he looks for blemishes only, he 
pronounces the poems rubbish and to all appearance suc- 
ceeds in proving them rubbish ! We, who regard Tennyson 
as a great poet, wonder how even a great poet could produce 
the Lotus Eaters at the age of 22. The critic, regarding 
Tennyson as an ordinary young man, wonders that even an 
ordinary young man could write such poor stuff. And the critic 
is not a poor simpleton either. The intellectual blundering 
comes of party spirit." 

Ruskin 

"With a view to lecture-writing, I have been looking at 
Ruskin's Edinburgh Lectures, which are models of what lec- 
tures should be. The first two lectures were a revelation to 
me in '54, and have affected my thoughts and pursuits in 
many ways ever since. Almost our greatest benefactor is the 
man who gives us a new permanent interest, and Ruskin 
revealed to me an art world full of truths and problems 
which aroused in me the most intense interest. If I had 
only been able to draw, I should probably have got con- 
siderably involved in the art world, but my fondness for 
doing something found no satisfaction here. Still Ruskin 
has given me many and many a pleasant hour, and has 
opened my eyes to much that I could not have seen with- 
out him." 

Ruskin's Notes, No. LV. (1858) 

" Beauty of expression in an author is like beauty of face 
in a woman. We cannot But look at it, we cannot but be 
interested in it, whatever they may say or do. These Notes 
of Ruskin's, thrown off, as he explains, in a hurry near 27 
years ago, and referring mostly to pictures now forgotten, 
2 H 



466 R. H. Quick 

still have a charm about them, and one finds them excellent 
company. It is marvellous how this man throws from him 
literary pearls as carelessly as a child shakes the soap-bubbles 
from a tobacco-pipe. One of his finest pieces of prose is the 
passage on poverty in his eulogy on Edward Frere (p. 33)." 

Ru skin's Hortus Inclusus 

" One does not know whether to be more pleased or vexed 
that Ruskin should have published this letter. The very name 
implies privacy. It is indecent to behave in a crowd as if no 
one were present but one's nearest relatives. Yet Ruskin 
throws down the wall and lets the public in. Much of the 
volume should not have been published at all, some things, 
and those the most interesting, not till after his death. How 
quaint his feeling that he half dreads a world without a Venice 
in it ! He is indeed a marvellous man with astounding 
capacities for enjoyment and yet so miserable ! His sympathies 
embrace everything beautiful in creation. Only a poet could 
write (p. 1 29), ' I found a strawberry growing just to please itself, 
as red as a ruby, high up on Yewdale crag, yesterday, in a little 
corner of rock all its own : so I left it to enjoy itself. It 
seemed as happy as a lamb, and no more meant to be eaten.' 
This is simpler and better than much of Wordsworth. There 
is a fine passage on the Bible (p. 128) like Maurice, but too 
long for me to copy. 

"Ruskin's mind is a melancholy study. With all his grand 
gifts he seems to me to have been sadly led estray by his self- 
sufficiency. He used to have a perfect abhorrence of things 
evil. Woolner (who looked upon him as a great corrupter of 
art) told me a story which proves this. Eastlake, Ruskin, and 
a third, whose name I forget, were deputed to look through 
Turner's portfolios after Turner's death, and they came upon 
some exceedingly indecent drawings. Ruskin was so shocked 
that he shed tears. All he could groan out was ' Then, after all, 



Ruskin 467 

he must have been a bad man ! ' The three destroyed the 
drawings — by far the best thing they could have done — but a 
way out of the difficulty which was of doubtful legality. Well, 
now in his old age Ruskin seems to admire ' fast ' young ladies. 
He writes, ' I've been put into a dreadful passion by two of my 
cleverest girl pupils " going off pins ! " ' It is exactly like a nice 
pear getting sleepy." 

Ruskirfs Praeterita 

" 18. 1. 86. We schoolmasters have to face the unpleasant 
truth that nearly all the great men (literary men especially) owe 
nothing to us. Does the schoolroom, while it benefits the 
ordinary boy, dwarf or ruin the original boy? Great writers we 
should expect to find the roof and crown of those who received 
an exclusively literary training, but in most cases it turns out 
that the great writer has never been to school, and if he has, 
he has been regarded as a failure. Seeley is the only satis- 
factory instance of a good schoolmaster's-boy turning out a first- 
rate writer. J. H. Newman, J. S. Mill, Carlyle, and Ruskin 
escaped the schoolmaster pretty completely. Tennyson was at 
a small country Grammar School (Louth), and Browning 
nowhere. Matthew Arnold, by the way, is an instance against 
me. 



»> 1 



a 



A l repeater ' Journal 



24. 1. 86. I lately proposed to Storr, half in jest, half in 
earnest, that the Journal of Education should have a permanent 
section, not the same every month, but recurring like a decimal, 
though not, as I think, with diminishing value. The great 
writers will, as a rule, have thought the truth most clearly and 
expressed it most appropriately, so that what they have said 

1 [Quick has overlooked some obvious instances, — W. E. Gladstone, 
Kinglake, Froude, Lecky, J. Morley, Swinburne, G. O. Trevelyan, do not 
exhaust the list.] 



468 R. H. Quick 

should be studied again and again by those who need that 
particular truth. But in these days no one will stand stale 
bread, and insists on hot rolls every morning. 

" On every subject there is such a Babel of voices, and 
directly one begins to study a subject one reads and reads a 
host of people who write about it and about it, and- by far the 
greater number had no right to take up the reader's time even 
for five minutes. I have at times felt inclined to be angry 
with publishers for putting obstructions in the way of new men 
getting a hearing, but now I feel inclined to bless them for 
it. They do occasionally close the mouth of a wise man, 
but they more than make amends for this by silencing whole 
armies of blockheads." 

H. M. Butler 

"2. 12. 86, I yesterday met H. M. Butler in London, and 
went down with him in his fly to Harrow. Tired as he was, he 
talked pretty well all the way. 

" In these notes, though I write only for myself, I have 
always kept in mind that after my departure ad plures the 
books might become publici juris, so I have been only too 
careful not to record conversations with friends in whom the 
public take an interest. But yesterday's conversation was well 
worth recording. The character of the Master of Trinity, to 
be installed to-morrow, is by no means easy to understand, and 
I can fancy people who have to do with him getting the most 
discordant notions of him. I have seen as many sides of him, 
perhaps, as any one now living, and conscious as I am of his 
wants in some respects, I have a genuine admiration for him. 
He is one of the most noble-minded men I have known. There 
is not a vestige of littleness about him. He seems incapable 
of envy, hatred, malice, or any uncharitableness ; and he has an 
enthusiasm for what is noble in great literature and great men. 
Characteristically he nearly wrecked his worldly prospects by 



Dr. H. M. Butler 469 

preaching to the Queen a eulogy of Lord Lawrence, and his 
admiration for Gordon was for a while a kind of ruling passion 
with him. Some men have intellects remarkable not for their 
strength, but for their restlessness. I should say this was true, 
not of Butler's intellect, but of his imagination. He never 
soars into poetic regions, but he never wearies of calling up the 
past and living again in memory. This is the cause of one of 
his defects. People have spoken of his power of sympathy. 
This seems to me a mistake. Butler is immensely sympathetic 
in velle, but not in esse or posse ; for Butler is so much wrapped 
up in the image his own mind calls up that he has no notion 
whatever of what is going on in the mind of his companion. 
Now as Butler is one of the most simple and guileless of the 
human race and as he delights in exercising the art in which he 
is so great, the art of expression, he naturally lets one see all 
that is going on in his mind. One sees therefore that in this 
one is in the superior position, that I for instance know his 
thoughts and he does not know mine. Yesterday I wanted to 
talk to him about a matter in which he takes a great interest, 
but naturally not so much as I do. I went to see him about 
this, and had told him there was something special I wanted to 
see him about, but there was no possibility of bringing the 
subject within the range of his ideas. I know, of course, that 
many would say he did not want to have the subject broached, 
but / know it was not so. For at least three-quarters of an 
hour he gave a most elaborately detailed account of E.'s life 
from the time of the first cold she caught, to her present 
condition at Davos. What a wonderful feat of memory it 
was ! If / don't post up my diary almost daily, I can never 
remember what I was doing the day before yesterday, and here 
was Butler remembering her whole life as if he had a photo- 
graph of it in his mind. I afterwards showed him a Harrow 
broadsheet of Dec. 1846, the first in which his name appeared. 
It might generally be said of Butler, as of Gladstone (whom he 
in several points resembles), that there is only one thing more 



470 R- H. Quick 

difficult than to get him to take up a subject, and that is when 
he has taken it up to get him to drop it. But, as I knew, there 
was no difficulty in exciting his interest here. He was at once 
fascinated by it, and I believe he would contentedly have gone 
on talking about it all night." 

Thackeray and Swift. A Comparison 

" 12. 2. 88. About 35 years ago I, then an undergraduate 
at Cambridge, heard Thackeray give there his Lectures on the 
Humourists. It was reading, not lecturing proper, but it was 
the most delightful and most musical reading imaginable. The 
wonderful beauty of Thackeray's prose came out as that of 
Beethoven's melodies comes out when Joachim plays them, 
and after all these years the music is in my head still. What 
I remember best is the contrasted pair of portraits, Addison 
and Swift. How well I remember, ' If you happened to be his 
inferior in intellect, which, with all respect for the present 
company, I think only too probable.' On reading these letters 
of Thackeray's I am reminded of the Journal to Stella and I see 
much resemblance between these giants. Thackeray has been 
accused of cynicism, of arrogance, of snobbery, just as Swift 
was, and the charges in both cases are only superficially true. 
Both were men of deep feeling who assumed a cynicism to 
disguise a deep tenderness. Both were melancholy men, 
weary of existence. Both exposed the meanness of humanity 
with a painful consciousness of their own share in it." 

Matthew Arnold's Death 

" 17. 4. 88. We have lost M. Arnold. He died suddenly 
at Liverpool on the 15th [15 Ap., '88]. Just now I naturally 
think of his kindness. He was not self-centred, like distin- 
guished people in general, but he took a genuine interest in 
the concerns of other people. I was very much struck by this 



John Bright 471 

one evening when I had been dining with him at Byron House 
(his house at Harrow). He asked me about my work, seemed 
quite shocked at the amount of time I spent on the correction 
of exercises out of school, and remonstrated with me quite 
severely about it. I have often thought of this as a rare 
interest shown in another's affairs and of a genuine effort to set 
things right and not fall back on our usual ' No business of 
mine.' " 

John Bright 

" 7 July, '73. Last evening I had an opportunity of talking 
to no less a man than John Bright. I got an impression of a 
much stronger man than one has from his photographs, not to 
say caricatures. He is very easy to talk to — talks very simply, 
without any kind of affectation, even the affectation of polite- 
ness. He is quite the Quaker in his bluntness, but he talks 
with you, not at you, asks all sorts of questions, seemed a good 
deal surprised by what I told him of the different scales of 
charges here. He said he had never been at much of a school 
himself and had left early. He gave some parliamentary 
anecdotes, two or three about his own repartees, which were 
not particularly happy. Once they were trying to get a member 
to shorten a speech, when he whispered to a neighbour, ' I 
can't, I've sent it to the papers.' 

" My impression of Bright is a pleasing one. He seems to 
me a good-natured creature, one can like well enough, if one 
does not happen to be a bull." 



472 R. H. Quick 



PREACHING AND LECTURING 

Sermon-writing, a peep behind the scenes 

"9.9.67. My old difficulty about sermons is stronger 
than ever. I sit down to write and the operation seems like 
wringing a towel which is nearly dry. After great labour only 
a few drops fall. The reason is, I suspect, that my thoughts 
and interests have long been engrossed by didactics. When I 
first took orders I had a great interest in the practical part of 
the High Church system and an enthusiasm against imputed 
righteousness. But this interest died out, partly, I think, 
because the High Church professed to be a universal system 
and was not. For the intellectual religious ideas of the school 
to which I now belong I never had any enthusiasm, though 
I don't see why such an enthusiasm should be impossible. 
I therefore went off to school teaching, in which I am really 
interested, and the consequence is that the only religious ideas 
with which my mind is conversant are quite elementary and so 
vague that they can hardly be worked into sermons. Besides 
all this I never had any facility in thinking or in expressing 
thought on any subject, so that I am much more surprised 
that I ever wrote sermons than that I cannot write them now. 
In spite of all this I sometimes think I ought to aim at 
preaching, but the task appalls me. A preacher is in fact a 
professor of the theory of life — not exactly an easy subject to 
take up ! Most of us confine ourselves to quoting and com- 
menting on the Text-book which our audience have nearly by 
heart, but what is wanted is to show the application of the 
Text-book, and just at this point our preachers fail. On 
Sunday I shall have to preach an old sermon on ' Effort makes 
the Christian.' Now in this matter it seems very hard to make 



Class morality 473 

phenomena square with theory. No doubt one's view of 
phenomena is very partial indeed and the difficulty may arise 
entirely from one's mistakes in estimating them, but to refuse 
to estimate them at all is fatal to one's intellectual honesty. 
As far as I can judge, then, there is very little effort in any 
one. Most people seem to drift along with the ordinary habits 
and ordinary morality of the class to which they belong. I 
used to think that if a man indulged consciously in any vice this 
vice would corrupt his whole nature like the fly in the ointment. 
But experience does not seem to confirm this belief. Private 
debauchery does not prevent a man from maintaining a high 
public morality. As far as one can judge, a vice is ruinous 
to a man if it is condemned by the class to which he belongs 
and not otherwise. So the class standard of morals is that 
which most people adopt, and this standard never makes great 
demands. Whenever the class is particularly tempted in any 
direction, the standard admits of lax conduct in that particular. 
Hence it is that whole classes are accused by the outside world 
of special sins. The old proverb makes every miller a thief, 
and fifty years ago every attorney was considered a rogue. 
Now, such a general feeling could not have existed unless a 
very unusually large proportion of millers or attorneys were less 
honest than their neighbours. If this fact be admitted, the 
explanation of it may easily be found in the opportunities for 
fraud which their businesses are constantly affording them. 
The milkman who stole flour or the miller who privately milked 
his neighbour's cows would be a very great rascal, but we 
cannot say the same of the milkman who habitually robs his 
customers or the miller who helps himself out of the sacks of 
wheat entrusted to him. The lodging-house keeper who stole 
beefsteaks at the butcher's would be capable of any theft, but 
we should be quite wrong to infer this from her consuming the 
steaks of her lodgers. Similarly we should know what to think 
of a doctor if he pocketed money he found lying about in a 
patient's house, but not if he paid a visit, the sole object of 



474 -R' H- Quick 

which was to transfer the same amount from his patient's 
pocket to his own. Yet supposing the money not to be missed 
the patient is wronged quite as much in the last case as in the 
first. Now these class failings, which I think we may assume 
to be the failings of the majority, prove that the majority do 
not aim at a high standard, and yet the majority are not bad 
fellows." 

' Woe unto you that are rich ' 

An Unpreached Sermon 

"6 Sept. '87. I have long thought that sermons might be, 
and therefore ought to be, much better than they are. But it 
mostly happens that a man has to preach either a great deal 
or very seldom, and neither condition is favourable to the 
composition of good sermons. If a man has to preach once a 
week he ought to study and think and write for some hours 
every day ; but this is what the large majority of persons have 
not inclination or energy for. The necessity of preaching 
often without giving much time to preparation of course drives 
a man into safe platitudes, and then the salt loses all savour 
of meaning. On the other hand, if a man has to preach 
seldom, he mostly finds, when the time comes, that he is not in 
the habit of thinking, or at all events of thinking methodically, 
and if he does in the end find anything to say, he says it 
crudely and at the best produces an essay rather than a sermon. 
If one had time and energy, the best plan would be to take a 
subject and write an essay upon it, saying everything one really 
thinks, and afterwards write a sermon in which the most suit- 
able thoughts were selected and expanded. 

" Nobody would dare, or ought to dare, to say exactly what 
he thought and everything he thought in a sermon, and I 
suppose most men would be afraid to commit their difficulties 
to paper at all. The consequence is that ' edifying ' subjects 
are selected and the most vital parts of the Christian religion 



A paradoxical text 475 

hardly touched upon. Our Lord's most emphatic utterances 
often took the form of paradoxes and so seem to challenge the 
attention of all who would learn from Him, but these paradoxes 
are quietly ignored by almost all the professional commentators 
on His words. I do not remember to have heard ' He that 
hateth not his father and his mother cannot be my disciple/ or 
' Woe unto you that are rich/ so much as quoted in a sermon, 
and it would be considered strange indeed if a preacher were 
to select such a verse as his text. Yet there can be no manner 
of doubt that these are among the Kernsp niche of Christianity. 
" I should like to preach from some of these texts, but I do 
not know whether it would be possible. Take for example 
the words ' Woe unto you that are rich,' &c. What does one 
believe, and what dare anyone say on this subject? One is 
instantly met by questions of all kinds. Do the words of our 
Lord establish (ceteris paribus) the superiority of poverty over 
riches? The Roman Church says yes, and praises voluntary 
poverty. Again, how are the dangers of riches to be avoided? 
How is the man with great possessions to cease to be a rich 
man in the sense in which our Lord uses the words ? If it is 
possible for a man with possessions to cease to be rich without 
giving up property, may not a man without wealth cease to be 
poor without acquiring property? Our Lord seems to me to 
be declaring what He declares in many forms, that for us there 
is no way of possessing or enjoying anything except by 
devoting it to a higher service than our own. So long as a 
man thinks of his possessions, whether wealth, time, or talents, 
as his own, he cannot enter into the kingdom of heaven any 
more than the camel can pass through the eye of a needle. 
It is only when he feels that he has nothing, that he can 
possess all things. I have no doubt that this is the keystone 
of Christian morality ; but I feel the difficulty of making such a 
high ideal square with the facts of daily life. One must also 
observe that the great mass of Christians have no intellectual 
perception of this truth, though they may more or less feel it. 
The ordinary rich man has the most fantastic notions of the 



476 R. H. Quick 

'rights of property.' In many cases he devotes it to the 
gratification of his own whims without the least regard to 
the effect of his expenditure on other people. He has oddly 
enough persuaded himself that these rights of property do not 
cease when the property has ceased to be in any sense his, 
when in fact, as far as the property is concerned, he has ceased 
to exist. He is quite indignant when he hears of laws limiting 
the power of testators or abrogating some decree of an ordinary 
mortal who lived in the 16th century. No one contends for 
the right of parliament to settle anything in perpetuity, and yet 
some people suppose such a right to be vested in the dullest 
blockhead who gets hold of ^1,000 and can keep it till he dies. 
" The ordinary theory then of Christians is unchristian if not 
antichristian. But supposing it can be altered, supposing we 
could all rise to-morrow with the firm conviction that we were 
bound to make the most of everything for the benefit of others ; 
or, if this is too violent an assumption, suppose the change to 
be wrought by degrees. Even then the supposition appears 
absurd. One might as well suppose a change in the physical 
as in the moral condition of life. But what is more to the 
purpose, one may ask how would one's own life be affected if 
one tried to employ all one's time, talents and money in this 
way? The world may be divided into two classes, those who 
have much leisure and those who have little or none. The 
greater part of us grind on at the work of our calling, for the 
most part mechanically, and when our work is finished we 
have no energy left for strenuous thought or action of any kind. 
In fact we, in a great measure, give up the exercise of our wills. 
Our daily work comes, and we do it as a matter of habit and 
obligation. Our leisure comes, and we fall in with any amuse- 
ment that offers, not even taking the pains to select among possible 
modes of relaxation the best, but taking the first that presents 
itself. It sometimes seems to me that if we have a personal 
spiritual foe he must have resolved to let alone people living in 
this way. They might no doubt be tempted to lead much less 
innocent lives, but then on the other hand if they were roused 



Modern school sermons 477 

they might soar much higher. Thought would destroy the 
paradise of such men, and they would have to rise to the 
realms above or sink to the abyss below. . . . 

" This is the way in which my thoughts wander about when 
I want to write a sermon. In the end I am obliged to write 
against time to get it finished at all. 

. " How much of my life have I wasted from knowing of some 
difficult task that ought to be done, and, while failing to do it, 
allowing myself to do nothing else !" 

Dr. Butler's Harrow Sermons 

" Unaffected and sensible, with good allusions to school life 
in general and public school life, or rather Harrow life, in 
particular. These sermons, like Temple's, show some singular 
modern characteristics. The old spirit of devotion to the 
Person of Christ and of aspiration after holiness like His, is not 
found in them. Still less is there an allusion to a future state ; 
at least the religion of these men has no particular reference 
to such a state. I am well aware that most of the religion of 
the pulpit nowadays which is taken from the old religion is 
purely conventional, and this no doubt has caused men who 
recognise the necessity of some connection between their words 
and thoughts to run into the extreme of saying less than they 
really feel. But after making every allowance on this ground 
one cannot help feeling the difference between the religion of 
St Paul and that of the Temple school among ourselves." 

Le sermon c'est Phomme 

" 6 June, '75. Very few sermons can be interesting from the 
profound thought they contain or the rhetorical fireworks they 
discharge, and ordinary sermons have no interest whatever unless 
they are felt to be the sincere utterance of what the preacher 
himself thinks and feels. 



478 R. H. Quick 

" We had an odd instance of this to-day. Blank preached a 
sermon on the text, ' The Lord turned and looked upon Peter.' 
We have always decried Blank's sermons because there is 
generally so much tinsel about the language that the preacher 
must think he is ' doing it.' But to-day in his remarks on 
personal influence there was nothing at all stilted in the 
language. There were however three things which seemed to 
throw a doubt on Blank's sincerity. First, there was as usual 
an apparently artificial manner. However, all who have tried 
know that this defect is often quite unavoidable. Secondly, he 
once or twice after delivering the first part of a sentence with 
great emphasis found he had read it wrong and looked back 
to put in or leave out a negative. This is most damaging. 
You want to feel that the man is speaking to you, not merely 
reporting what he or somebody else had said or thought at 
some other time. This personal relation is in fact the very 
life of the sermon, and each stumble such as I have named gives 
it a deadly blow. And lastly, we have always supposed that 
Blank neither exercised nor tried to exercise much personal 
influence on the boys with whom he comes in contact. Still, 
for all that the sermon was so little conventional in its tone 
that I am convinced it was very genuine indeed, and I feel 
absolutely certain that if John Smith had preached this sermon 
it would have been spoken of and remembered as one of the 
best sermons of Harrovian modern times, but from Blank it 
passes altogether without notice." 1 

Social Science Congress and Speaking 

" 12 Oct. '75. Brighton. I have been at divers Social 
Science meetings in the last few days, not altogether with 
profit or satisfaction. The chief good of these meetings is 

1 Can it be from Blank's sermons that Quick quotes the following 
delightful illustration of the unreality of school sermons, ' Let your pleas- 
antries, my younger brethren, be like the coruscations in the summer sky, 
lambent yet innocuous ' ? 



Congress oratory 479 

that they make reformers personally acquainted with one 
another, so that one feels one is working with real men and 
women, not with mere names. I suppose too that something 
is done in the way of spreading notions, but very little. Each 
man or woman is keen on just the truth he or she has struck 
out, and does not take any real interest in what other people 
have struck out. When one hears this or that educational 
truth urged with vehemence, one remembers how important it 
seemed when one first made it out, but now it has become 
trite to one, and though really quite as true and quite as 
important as at first it runs some risk of being neglected by us. 
How can truth keep its freshness for us ? I wish some speaker 
or preacher would tell us this. 

" As a rule the speakers one hears rather bore one. Now 
and then (very rarely) one hears a man who by careful practice 
has made himself a good speaker and who gives one pleasure. 
The next best speakers are sensible people who hav'n't practised 
at all and simply say what they have to say and then leave off. 
But the speaker who bores one is the man who has had a great 
deal of practice and rather fancies he is doing it. There are a 
good many such at these meetings. I especially tremble when 
a clergyman gets up. He is likely to pound away in a 
hortatory manner and ' make a speech,' not say anything. If 
he uses his hands and arms he is certain to be a nuisance. 
Practice does not at all necessarily make perfect in speaking ; 
indeed, common practice, like much so-called practice at the 
piano, really does more harm than good." 



Lectures, extempore or written 

" I lectured last night (11 Nov. '75) for Mr Payne on the 
Jesuit schools. I had not written the lecture but had got up 
the subject pretty carefully and managed to talk for an hour or 
more without much difficulty. However, I can't tell much 



480 R. H. Quick 

about the advantage or disadvantage of extempore lecturing, 
nor of my powers or weakness that way, till I have lectured to 
an audience that does not write. Most of the ladies tear away 
with their pens and pencils and the lecture becomes mere 
dictation. I have no doubt the pleasantest lectures for an 
educated audience are written essays such as Sir James Stephen 
used to give us at Cambridge. Of course it may be said that 
the advantage of hearing such lectures over reading them by 
one's own fireside is small and that the lecturer had better give 
up delivering them and simply publish. But a man's thoughts 
do come more forcibly and freshly when he addresses them to a 
number of people before him than when he merely sends one 
in print what he has written. One odd thing is that the force 
of what he says seems to depend partly on the size of the 
audience to whom he says it. The very best of sermons would 
sound tame and dull if addressed to the half-dozen old women 
and the dozen children who form an afternoon congregation. 
On the other hand even commonplace thoughts get some life 
when the congregation is such a congregation as one sees at 
All Saints' or St Andrew's. I doubt whether Sir J. Stephen's 
lectures would have come with much force if he had read them 
to two or three of us in his dining-room. So there is, I think, 
a raison d'etre for lectures which are carefully written essays. 
On the other hand the unwritten lecture has great advantages for 
a less educated audience. One can see the effect everything has, 
one can enlarge on what interests, explain whatever puzzles. 
One can look one's audience in the face, and that is an 
immense gain. Unfortunately this incessant writing of the 
ladies at the College of Preceptors deprives one of this 
advantage. I am inclined to think that the ideal lecture would 
be after this manner : — The lecturer makes a careful skeleton 
of the lecture, gets it printed and distributes it before the 
lecture. He then requests his audience not to write. He will 
have carefully prepared what he is going to say and he will 
have had practice enough in speaking to talk in tolerably long 



Preachers 48 1 

sentences, avoiding small jerky utterances on the one hand 
and the appearance of an €7rtSei£is on the other. 

" In these lectures on the history of education the great 
matter is to seize on principles and avoid details that do not 
directly bear on these principles." 

The Power of Words 

" 24 Nov. '75. Till now I have always pooh-poohed the 
lecturing plan of teaching and attributed very little importance 
to words. But, after all, words are sometimes more powerful 
than deeds. On Sunday I heard a lesson read from Ecclesi- 
astes and I remembered the power the words once had over 
me. Perhaps my conception of the meaning was not altogether 
that of the writer : the power of the words depends as much 
on what they find as on what they bring — as much and more. 
But to despise the force of words would be as wise as to despise 
the power of a lucifer-match in a powder-magazine." 

Difficile est proprie commnnia dicere 

" 29 Nov. '75. I preached last night at the Hospital, 
Brighton, on the text, ' Whatsoever a man soweth that shall 
he reap,' and I could not have taken a better subject for 
Advent Sunday. But as usual I failed to beat out what I had 
to say thin enough. To do this takes a great deal of time 
and trouble and more practice than I have, but I think I know 
what to aim at. Just as in other teaching one should stick to 
a single truth and make it plain by showing it in many of its 
applications. How absurd it is to talk of a good sermon or a 
good lecture without judging ad modum recipients. J..W. says 
that she heard the Bishop of Exeter (Temple) once and that 
was quite enough for her : he was a very poor preacher. I say 
I heard Dean Boyd once and that was quite enough for me. 
21 



482 R. H. Quick 

But both the Bishop and the Dean are good, but they are 
good for different people. Boyd's mind is full of the common- 
places which please uneducated people, and he puts these in 
a clear and pleasant form so that they recognise their own 
thoughts verkldrt. Temple cares for the questions which have 
no existence for the many, but those who think about the same 
things find help from his sermons. So it is really absurd for 
us to say that Boyd's sermons or Temple's are good without 
considering the audiences addressed. Words that at times are 
mighty forces prove at other times mere sounds. Rousseau 
reads that the Athenian prisoners at Syracuse after the failure 
of the expedition under Nicias were well treated because they 
could repeat Homer. Rousseau forthwith sets to work to 
learn poetry by heart. Rousseau declaims against civilisation, 
and the whole framework of society is shaken by his words. 
Yes, because society was sick and Rousseau, like a physician, 
described the symptoms and gave what seemed the true the- 
ory of the malady. If society had been sound, Le Contrat 
Social would perhaps have been little more noticed than the 
ordinary run of prize exercises. 

" But I am wandering from sermons. In addressing or- 
dinary congregations one should avoid any train of thought 
which will be foreign to their minds. So one is driven to the 
commonplace. But though some commonplaces are flat, 
stale, and unprofitable, there are others which really contain 
the deepest truths in existence. Linquenda tellus, &c, is 
commonplace enough, but, as Helps says, no truth should be 
more living to us. So we may take notions familiar to our 
hearers as to us, and yet we may feel an interest in these 
notions and may interest our hearers. Last night I found my 
audience listening when I talked about the ' unlucky ' man, 
the man who thinks himself persecuted by fortune, who always 
has a long tale why this or that has not succeeded with him. 
Here, when one was talking about what the audience knew, 
one had no difficulty in interesting them." 



A Sermon of Harvey Goodwin s 483 



Harvey Goodwin as a preacher 

"26 Oct. '79. To-day I heard Harvey Goodwin again at 
the University Church. Five and twenty years seem to have 
made little change in him, and what change there is, is, I 
think, for the better. What strikes me now, as it did then, is 
the genuine goodness and simplicity of the man. He never 
dreams of preaching a good sermon, but simply endeavours to 
say something that will be useful to his hearers. Now, as of 
old, he thinks more of impressible undergraduates than of 
unimpressible dons. His text to-day was ' Come, let us reason 
together,' and the sermon was addressed to freshmen. He 
praised the ancient University education, which consisted not 
in learning but in ' wrangling ' or reason. Not ' statuit Ne wtonus,' 
but 'recte statuit': everything had to be proved. The 
modern system, according to H. G., makes men credulous in 
scientific matters and disposed to rank the last suggested 
hypothesis with the theory of gravitation. He then went on to 
point out how much of truth there is beyond the domain of 
reasoning. There is truth in music which you cannot reason 
about ; there is truth in feeling, truth in affection. And so, 

too, there is truth in religious belief. Now the chief merit in 

all this was its sincerity and earnestness. H. G. used to be a 
somewhat awkward mannerist, but we got attached to his 
mannerism. This has somewhat toned down, and what there 
is left of it is almost lost sight of in the emphasis with which 
he throws himself into his message." 

Manner 

"About manner I have' in my time thought and in these 
notes written a good deal. It is very hard to determine the 
right course. The effort to avoid a manner may lead to a 
manner and that a very bad one. On the other hand, the 



484 R. H. Quick 

mere suspicion of an assumed manner is fatal to the speaker's 
success. The best way I know is to hear men with a good 
manner and then quite unconsciously one catches something 
of it. After hearing a great player or singer the ordinary 
player or singer seems to catch and give forth a kind of faint 
echo to their excellence, and so it is in speaking. Certainly 
bad manner is very catching. I used to suffer from D.'s 
extempore speaking, which in manner was very bad. In 
my last lecture I fancied here and there there was a sound 
caught from Seeley's lectures which I heard two years ago. I 
think I must go to his lectures to pick up some more." 

A Lecture on Difficulties 

"19 June, '78. I lectured at Westminster to the Educa- 
tion Society on Difficulties. There were not a dozen people 
in the room, but we had some interesting discussion. The 
point most canvassed was, What is thorough learning? Mr. 
Cooke, a drawing-master, maintained that thoroughness must 
always be relative, not absolute. He could say of a drawing 
that it was good or bad only when he knew the pupil's powers. 
One point he raised was this : he found children liked 
grotesque figures — should they be allowed to have grotesque 
figures to copy or not? In his natural science lessons he 
found boys up to the age of ten or so always ready to observe 
whatever things they had brought before them, but after that 
age they seem not to care to observe, the things no longer 
had an interest for them." 

A Lecture of J. R. Seeley's 

"29 Oct. '79. To-day, besides giving a lecture, I have 
heard one from Seeley. The lecture was marvellously fine ; 
hearing such a lecture is an event in one's life. Seeley was 
examining the Church in the 5th century, and he said the 



A Lecture of See ley s 485 

Roman Empire did not seem to the people of that age to pass 
away, because the Roman Empire became associated in their 
minds with Christianity. He then considered the translation 
of Christianity into Latin Christianity, and he said that Roman 
Catholicism was a chemical combination of two religions, 
Romanity and Christianity, religions not only distinct but in 
some respects naturally opposed. The way in which Seeley 
expounded his theory was masterly, and to hear such a lecture 
is an event in one's intellectual history. It affects one's views 
of things for ever after. There is after all a good deal of 
difference in hearing and reading. Hearing a first-rate lecturer 
makes far more impression. If this is the case, even with 
people accustomed to the use of books, how much more with 
those who are not used to books ! But the deficiencies of in- 
different lecturing are perhaps more striking than of indifferent 
books. What a queer thing the English respect for social 
position is ! When Sir James Stephen lectured in olden times 
he had a good number of dons, professors, &c, to hear him, 
and if an old gentleman with a title and a good social standing 
were to come again and lecture the dons would again flock to 
hear him. But a lecture of Seeley 's is worth all the lectures 
Sir J. S. ever gave, and as far as I observed not a single don 
goes to hear him." 

Lecturers — H. A.J. Munro, Dean Stanley, J. Ruskin, 
C. Wordsworth 

" When you get first-hand knowledge it comes more freshly 
from a man than from a book. This is true even when the 
lecturer's form is bad. I have heard H. A. J. Munro lecture 
on a classical subject and Dean Stanley on a book of the O. T. 
Munro's form was wretched, but one felt one was in contact 
with splendid scholarship and this was a great advantage. In 
Stanley's case, of course, the form might have been good, but 
he had not put his knowledge into shape, and his remarks, 



486 R. H. Quick 

good as they were, came out in a jerky way which was not 
effective. I doubted whether reading would not have been 
better. Except from first-rate men information lectures are a 
simple nuisance. C. used to read up ordinary notes on the 
N. T., and just reproduce them. So far as they were altered 
they lost by the alteration 

" Talking of natural gifts, I once was at a meeting of the 
Working Men's College in Great Ormond Street, when Ruskin 
offered to speak on any subject suggested, and he did speak 
admirably on several points suggested by members of the 
audience. It is not uncommon for men of genius to have this 
power, but others — Goldsmith, Rousseau, Thackeray — have 
been entirely without it. 

" Mandating, as the Scotch call it, does not quite solve the 
difficulty. When a thing has been learnt by heart, and even 
when one has read it very often, it loses its connection with 
one's present thought and one feels oneself vox et praetei'ea 
nihil. There is then a tendency to read or recite with a 
manner that shows one is as it were reporting one's former self 
rather than uttering one's present thoughts. The effort to 
avoid this leads to pomposity of manner and unnatural 
emphasis. Sometimes the preacher or lecturer adopts a stereo- 
typed manner and his little fish have the voice of whales. I 
myself heard Christopher Wordsworth (now Bishop of Lincoln) 
announce as a stupendous truth, 'We shall continue the 

subject on a future occasion.' It is essential to most lecturers 

that they should be able to look at their hearers and see the 
effect of what they are saying. The other day I put on 
spectacles, but I found at once that this cut me off from my 
hearers, whom I could not see through them." 

French Conferences 

"Nov. '69. Last night I went to a Conference (39, Boule- 
vard des Capucines) . Every evening somebody lectures there 



French lecturers 487 

and gets an audience at a franc or two francs each. These 
popular lectures draw so well that one must go at least half an 
hour beforehand to get a good place, and a quarter to get any- 
place at all. Philarete Charles, Guillaume Guizot and others 
get overflowing audiences at the College de France. The 
lecture I heard from Charles was very amusing, and the 
audience very sympathetic and disorderly. Although the lec- 
ture was written it was of the flashy kind and was delivered 
with great emphasis. It was strongly anti-catholic, not to say 
anti-Christian. He lampooned Lady Byron and Mrs. Stowe, 
both of whom he pronounced strait-laced Calvinists. Guizot 
fils, who is lecturing on Life and Works of Moliere, is much 
more finished. He has nothing written, but speaks very well, 
slowly and distinctly, but without hesitation. The other lec- 
turers I have heard, Levy and EichhorT, have only about 40 
and 20 respectively to hear them. The one translates Hermann 
und Dorothea and the other Byron's Corsair." 

Much Preaching blunts Feeling 

" I should think that having to write sermons would 
very much change the attitude of one's mind towards sacred 
things. Many of one's thoughts are at least three parts feeling, 
and would shrink from expression in words. Words are a 
clumsy device for indicating feelings, and they always or almost 
always give a suspicion of unreality and extravagance even to 
the utterer himself; so I should not like to have to preach 
some of the thoughts that I find most influential. And if I 
did try, I believe a few sentences would be all I could say, 
even at the right time, and sometimes, often indeed, I could 
say nothing. So one is driven to the intellect for a supply of 
material, and then the intellect has to work ad hoc" 



488 R. H. Quick 



LECTURING 

Keep your jokes till the propriety stage is passed 

"22. 4. 80. I am distinctly not successful as a lecturer. 
I fail to make my audience sensitive and leave little impres- 
sion on their minds. Birds, I believe, masticate the food 
they give their young. Mental food should be thoroughly 
masticated before it is given to an audience. A reader may 
be pleased by something which comes to him as a surprise, 
but you can't surprise an audience, for if what you say is 
not expected it is not understood. An audience can't make 
the smallest mental effort of any kind. Even a joke must 
be a very broad one or the audience will miss it. If one 
watches a crowd looking at Punch and Judy one finds the 
readiest roar of laughter follows the thoroughly comprehen- 
sible incident of Punch knocking down some one with a 
big stick. There is a good laugh the first time, but the 
merriment increases immensely if he goes on knocking people 
down and the audience knows the blow is coming. In the 
same way an audience is always delighted by some words 
being used over and over, as they are by so many of the 
characters in Dickens, or as ( Any other man ' or ' How's 
your poor foot ? ' were used by Unwins. So little do jokes 
lose, so much in fact do they gain by being familiar, that 
when a piece has been acted many times the audience will 
laugh by anticipation when they approach a joke. I observed 
this especially in Paris, when ' Frou-frou ' had had a long run 
at the Gymnase. 

" Now I never get an audience up to the sensitive stage, 
and my best things are consequently thrown away. I have 
found it is a great mistake to try a joke near the beginning 
of an address. Your audience is like a shy young partner who 



In touch with audience 489 

has just stood up to dance with you. When I was a youngster 
I used to find that there was a propriety stage which had to be 
passed through at every party, and that the fun of the party 
began when this was over, sometimes before supper, but most 
completely after supper. Now you must go through a pro- 
priety stage with your audience. Any attempt at a joke near 
the beginning of a lecture will seem as much out of place as at 
a funeral and will be received with a ' blank wall of counte- 
nance' like an ordinary platitude. The lecturer's art is shown 
in getting over the propriety stage and becoming on familiar 
terms with his audience. This is what Fitch does and I 
cannot do. He soon manages to make them laugh heartily. 
"But can a lecturer's success be measured by his power of 
making his audience laugh? Yes, if he wants to make them 
laugh. He ought to feel that he is carrying his audience with 
him, and if he tries a joke and they receive it as a platitude he 
feels in an instant that there is no rapport between them 
and himself. His words he knows are mere sounds and he 
had better leave off as soon as possible. There are few things 
more delightful on the one hand than taking an audience with 
you and feeling thoroughly en rapport with them, and on the 
other few more dreary sensations than having to go on with a 
consciousness that the audience would rather you stopt." 

Dean Plumptre and Archdeacon A — / a contrast 

" 23. 3. 80. These last Sundays I have been preaching to 
children, but not successfully. Here I find my mind works pretty 
well. A fair supply of things apparently worth saying suggest 
themselves. It is true most of them are not the right kind of 
thoughts for the young, but still they are genuine thoughts and 
might influence grown people at least. But why is it that one 
lives without such thoughts if one has not to preach ? There 
seems something amiss when the preacher has to produce for 
export a kind of ware not wanted for home consumption. To 



49° R- H> Quick 

be sure I often get interested in the thoughts of my own 
sermons, but the interest is transient. In life as in school- 
keeping we know that theory is an excellent thing, but in 
practice we seem to be able to do without it, and we do do 
without it." 

"22. 10. 81. Last week I heard Archdeacon A. preach. 
It was a great treat, and it has taught me something about 
preaching. What is it that makes one listen with pleasure 
to a man? Given, 1, something to say worth saying, 2, a 
good, clear voice without any unpleasant peculiarity, 3, a per- 
fect command of good language — surely with all these a man 
must be easy to listen to. But Plumptre has all these, and 
Plumptre is not easy to listen to. What then has Archdeacon 
A. that Plumptre has not? I fancy it is something in the 
man's character. A. in early days was a charming com- 
panion, perhaps the most charming I ever knew. In this 
respect he seems to me now merely the wreck of his former 
self. He still has something of the old manner, but he is far 
too much wrapped up in himself and his own performances to 
be a really good companion. Poor man ! he has become a 
Venerable before fifty, and is it to be wondered at? Still there 
is something of the old charm of manner left, and he has that 
grand gift for catching the ear, a pleasant voice. Sometimes 
one feels inclined to say that voice is everything, that it does 
not matter what the speaker has to say, he will be listened to 
if he has a pleasing voice, and not otherwise. It is, I think, 
true that he must be listened to if he has a pleasing voice, but 
Sortain of Brighton with his unpleasant, squeaky voice made 
people listen to him. So voice is not the indispensable con- 
dition. Perhaps there is no one indispensable condition, but 
there may be several things any one of which secures success. 
A. has no doubt a great advantage over P. in his voice, which 
is much more pleasing, but he has a greater still in his power 
of conveying to his hearers that his sermon is a part of himself. 
P. gives you the notion that he is a well-read man and a 



Personal charm 491 

thoughtful man, but his learning and his thoughts seem rather 
apparatus for preaching than the man himself. A. speaks the 
language of feeling, and this, when genuine, seems -to show you 
the man himself, for feeling unless histrionic must be the man 
himself, thought only may be. Here are two things, voice and 
feeling, which A. has, and P. has not, and I fancy either would 
give success. Some other things both have, which are excellent 
in their way, but will not do alone, and may be dispensed with 
when the indispensable are found — e.g. good flowing English. 
The ear is pleased by a flow of language. When the expression 
is jerky or bald, the effect on the hearers is discomfort, and 
I don't suppose people often get good from unpleasant sermons. 
All teaching should be, as Sacchini says, ex plena, and if there is 
no flow, people naturally suspect that the source is nearly dried 
up. To be sure this defect was noticeable to some extent in 
Cobden, who was, nevertheless, a powerful speaker, but with 
Cobden you felt that if there was any deficiency it was of words 
only. Another advantage A. and P. have in common is entire 
freedom from the book. It is a great advantage to be able to 
look at the hearers, but Melvill, who used to rivet everyone's 
attention so that nobody coughed till the end of the sentence, 
never raised his eyes from his book." 

Platitudes 

" In his sermon this morning L. said, ' It is an awful thing 
to trifle with God ' and sentence after sentence of the same 
kind. Such platitude is supposed to be the regular thing in 
the pulpit, and probably I am the only person in the congre- 
gation who remembers that he said it, and I only remember it 
as a typical instance of unmeaning sermon talk. L. would no 
more think of using such language out of the pulpit than he 

would of going to a dinner-party in his surplice Some of us 

say things that come from our hearts, but we have only a small 
supply of them, and we are driven into platitudes for padding, 



492 R. H. Quick 

and by degrees we find the platitudes so much easier that we 
use them exclusively. This is fatal. It gets to be understood 
on all hands that the preacher is firing blank cartridges and no 
one minds him." 



Preaching at Guildford Workhouse 

" 2. 7. 82. One doubts one's sincerity in making such 
statements, but I think I may say to myself that I would sooner 
preach successfully in the workhouse than in Lincoln's Inn 
Chapel ; but the conditions of success are not lighter perhaps 
in the one case than in the other. When I was a boy, I used 
to feel that preachers were mostly outside the world of fact, and 
I used to devise some very straightforward mode of address for 
bringing people to a consciousness that the talk meant some- 
thing. Now I am old I see the difficulty as plainly as ever, 
but I no longer see or think I see the means of overcoming it. 
Even anecdotes get a sermony hue and become as little 
observable and as little observed as the Arctic fox in the snow. 
In school teaching I am careful never to go on saying anything 
if I think I have lost the boys' attention. But one can't leave 
off in a sermon if the thoughts of the congregation seem 
wandering. And the instant one gets accustomed to address 
people not listening, it's all up with the preaching. No preach- 
ing is successful unless the congregation as a body listen to it. 
Now I have not, as yet, got the power of gaining attention. I 
say what is worth listening to, but I can't get the manner that 
makes people listen. What is it that is wanting? I know 
beforehand pretty well what I am going to say, words come 
without difficulty, and yet I don't seem to be in the same 
medium as the people I am addressing. I look at them as I 
look at the fish in the Brighton Aquarium. They, like the 
fish, seem at times staring at me, but we both feel that we 
cannot affect one another." 



The art of speaking 493 



Effects of Preaching on the Preacher 

" The great danger of preaching seems to me that one so 
soon loses touch of one's own life. One says what seems to 
one good and true, but it is sermon matter, thought out ad hoc, 
not truth one has been living by. On the other hand from 
having to preach one may think out truth that one afterwards 
lives by." 

Phillips B?'ooks 

"21. 11. 83. I still have great difficulty to find time 
for sermons. Most life-thought seems to me inarticulate. I 
find it hard to get expressible thoughts that shall have some 
connection with my life. If one puts on (so to speak) the 
thoughts of good writers one feels like David in Saul's armour 
and lays them aside again because one has not proved 
them. But I must manage to get expressible truth from 
somewhere and I have just been reading ' The Greatness of 
Faith,' one of Phillips Brooks's Sermons preached in English 
Churches. 

" Brooks preaches sermons like my own idealised. Nobody 
might find this out unless I told him, but there is some truth 
in it." 

The Art of Speaking 

"22. 5. 84. The other night I was at the F.D.M. (Maurice) 
Society, where I found a roomful of Mauricians of about my 
standing. What struck me most was the extreme badness of 
the speaking. I think if the ordinary man had something to 
say and just got up and said it, we should have very tidy 
speaking. But most people seem to draw a distinction between 
making a speech and saying something. They have no definite 
thing that they want to say and then sit down, but they seem 



494 -#. H- Quick 

fumbling in their minds first for materials and then for expres- 
sion. They don't find either in very good form and they go on 
and on in the hope of hitting on something better presently. 
They are like the man in the Dunciad who 

' Groped for his sense and found no meaning there, 
Then floundered on and on in sheer despair. 1 

But if people want to make speeches they should study the art. 
I'm not sure it is a good art. Better not make a speech but say 
what you have to say and then leave off. But the artist, a man 
like Gladstone or Montagu Butler, is certainly an entertainer 
and I would as soon hear him as a musician ; but in either 
case it is an art and must be learnt. 

"There are in my judgment two kinds of speaking. The 
first is mere talking to more than one person. You know 
something which you want to say to them ; you think only of 
that something ; you say it, and there's an end. The other 
kind is when the speech is a sort of performance and whatever 
the matter may be the speaker shows skill in his handling of it, 
in his command of words, and grace of voice and manner. 
The first kind ought to be possible to anyone, but in practice 
it is not. We seldom have anything very clear and sharply 
limited to say, and if we have we seldom have the sense to 
stick to it, say it, and then leave off. Most people when on 
their legs feel bound to ' make a speech.' So the first kind of 
speaking is rare indeed. On Sunday last I heard two artists in 
speech, the Bishop of Rochester and Spurgeon. The Bishop 
gave a capital address to children and never lost touch of his 
audience. Spurgeon did not take me with him or even interest 
me at all. But one thing I observed both speakers did. They 
took a large tract of country, so to speak, for their walk, and if 
a thing seemed to suit they dilated on it ; if not they passed on. 
In this way they made sure of fluency ; but in the result, though 
the Bishop at least left many detached thoughts in the mind, 
neither speaker produced any total impression." 



Maurice s Sermons 495 



F. D. Maurice's Sermons 

" 16. 10. 87. I have been reading the Lincoln's Inn 
Sermons, vol. vi. Maurice alternately attracts and repels me. 
He seems to me to have what so few Christian teachers have, 
a constant sense that God is in very deed a spirit speaking 
to our spirits. But then he seems to be always squeezing 
meanings into forms of statement or narrative that we cannot 
suppose to have been intended for them. Thus in the Samuel 
narrative (1 Samuel iii. 9) Maurice is fierce against those who 
think the husk must be thrown away. The narrative must be 
taken just as it is. But Maurice evidently struggles against 
any sense impressions in revelations to Abraham or Samuel. 
They may have existed, he says, but merely as accompani- 
ments. He obviously would like to get rid of them altogether, 
and yet he does not do so. He seems to me to ignore the 
husk while protesting (and who could for an instant doubt his 
sincerity?) that he is not ignoring it." 



Expression affects thought 

" 24. 12. 84. I was to-day thinking of the effect which the 
necessity of expressing our thoughts must have on the thoughts 
themselves. Most people are not obliged to express their 
thoughts and they either never think connectedly or they think 
vaguely and are content with half thoughts. 

" We know what a difference it makes to our observation of 
anything whether we look at it simply for our own pleasure or 
with the intention of describing it. The eye of the artist sees 
far more than that of the ordinary spectator. In my early 
travelling days I used to write accounts of what I saw. The 
consequence was that I was on the look-out for what might 
be described. This changed my attitude of mind from the 
passiveness which simply takes in impressions as they come. 



496 R. H. Quick 

And I found that what I afterwards described stood out so 
prominently in my memory that all else fell into the shade. 

" Having to write sermons cannot fail to influence religious 
thought. Most people neglect the highest problems and lessons 
of religion. Those who write sermons must' speak of them. 
But the truth they live by hardly affords them enough material. 
They must then go beyond it, they must say what they think 
true but do not work into their own lives or what has no root 
in their minds at all. In the little sermon writing I have done, 
I have had to explore for sermon purposes or have found truth 
which has seemed to me valuable, but I have failed to work it 
into my own life, so that had I gone on preaching it there 
would soon have been a consciousness of unreality about what 
I preached to others." 

Truth and feeling 

"30. 11. 85. I yesterday intended to preach a sermon I 
had written during the previous week. By mistake I took an 
old sermon and had to preach it. This old sermon I had 
already preached extempore in the afternoon. The old sermon 
was far the better of the two, indeed it contained thought that 
is, I hold, most precious. But though I approve of the old 
sermon intellectually, I could not feel it even as I feel the 
commonplace of the new sermon. Coleridge's words — 

" ' I see, not feel, how beautiful they are, 1 

applies to things true no less than to things beautiful. Now it 
is the union of feeling with thought that gives thought its force. 
The scientific people say, as Renan has put it, 'Now abideth 
goodness, beauty, truth, but the greatest of these is truth.' 
But there is truth and truth, and if we think of truth as the 
scientific folk do, as accurate thought about the material world, 
we have little of what seems to me vital truth, viz. truth 
penetrated, permeated, informed by feeling. Even intellectual 



Living truth 497 

truth looks different at different times. When the philosopher 
who hit on the truth about the square on the hypotenuse of a 
right-angled triangle, thought of the proposition after it was 
old, it seemed much less interesting than it did at first. But 
personal truth can be more than merely interesting, it can be 
living. Even the philosophers are not mere intellect, and 
when they have settled as much as ever can be settled about 
the laws of matter, there will still be whole realms of other 
kinds of truth which these laws will not explain. Herbert 
Spencer says that poetic expression should be studied scien- 
tifically and its laws ascertained, but it is obvious that no 
future Milton or Tennyson will write poetry by application of 
these laws. We might as well think of future Mozarts and 
Schuberts composing melodies by laws of sequence of sound." 

2K 



498 ^. H, Quick 



RELIGIOUS BELIEFS 
XVIII 

After reading Ward's Ideal of a Christian Church 

" How far the Roman Church leads to Christ, how far it 
obscures Him, I have neither the power nor the means for 
determining. It seems to me that I am not required, at least 
at the present time, to trouble myself with such questions. 
Ward's book would lead me to this course. He contends for 
the supremacy of conscience in determining our religion, both 
in faith and practice. By conscience he does not mean Butler's 
conscience, but rather the higher instincts of our nature. Now 
my moral instincts do not lead towards Rome, rather the 
reverse. When studying any Roman Catholic work I never 
seem to be breathing a healthy spiritual atmosphere. This 
however is likely enough to be the effect of early prejudices." 

Pessimism is practical atheism 

" 17. 6. 82. Directly things don't go the way one thinks 
they ought to go one jumps to the conclusion, 'L'univers est 
un sot pays.' Just now I am in a state of disgust at my own 
affairs, and (perhaps as a consequence) at public affairs, and 
one begins to rail at all the firstborn of Egypt. But this is 
practical atheism. It is in fact doubting whether reason has 
the upper hand in the conduct of human affairs, on no better 
grounds than personal observation of a very few facts, and 
those very paltry facts too. 



Confessio Fidei 499 

" I give myself for over twenty years to the study of the art 
of teaching, and then I think I will keep a model school and 
show what can be done. I know full well that most preparatory 
schools are bad and that mine is by comparison good, yet while 
all sorts of impostors get boys sent them, I can get not enough 
to pay for house and servants. . . . 

" So I conclude that stupidity reigns. But after all I may 
not be so decidedly superior in intelligence to the Supreme 
Director of all things as in effect I assume that I am. There 
are no doubt many proofs of the power of stupidity, proofs 
more remarkable than those that have produced such an effect 
on my own mind ; but after all they do not amount to a justi- 
fication of atheism, and if the will of God does affect human 
affairs, reason must in the long run be more powerful than un- 
reason, and so long as we are striving to get reason to prevail, 
we are on the winning side, whatever appearances may say." 

Confessio Fidei 

11 Which is the more ridiculous, the Catholic who thinks 
that divine justice will torture a man for not receiving certain 
dogmas, or the Protestant who insists on the duty of private 
judgment? Of course the Catholic may say that if a man has 
any doubts about the double procession or about Transub- 
stantiation he is not in a right frame of mind — in fact that the 
only frame of mind which is consistent with salvation is the 
' mouth open and the eyes shut ' condition ; but we can hardly 
suppose that men were made with the faculty of thinking 
merely in order that they might decline to use it. On the 
other hand the Protestant's ' private judgment ' is a mere 
phantom of his imagination. If you could project a body into 
space with a certain velocity and tell a mathematician all the 
forces that are acting and will act on it he would determine its 
position at any time you chose. The position of any ordinary 
mind might be determined with equal exactness if we knew 



500 R. H. Quick 

the external influences which had acted on it. And so I am 
in middle age and fast approaching the stage at which a man's 
mind crystallises and has no further change, and I find myself 
not a Catholic and a very questionable sort of Protestant. All 
I can say is that as far as I can see there is only one name 
given whereby we can be saved. The meaning I attach to 
these words however is not exactly that which they bear at 
Exeter Hall. Thus I am thoroughly detached (more so I fear 
than I ought to be) both socially and intellectually. My mind 
is chiefly influenced by two considerations, ist the mixture of 
good and evil in all things and persons, 2nd the insignificance 
of cares and pleasures which must so soon come to an end. 
These thoughts influence me always. In my better moments 
I trust that as we may trace on a card a curve which obeys the 
same laws as the paths of the planets, so in our little life we 
may conform ourselves to the will of a righteous and loving 
Father. The great difficulty of all others to my mind is this : 
Christianity seems to say to all men, ' Seek first the kingdom 
of God and His righteousness,' unless you do this there is no 
goodness possible for you. As a fact the immense majority 
of people do not comply with this condition, and yet are not 
any worse than the religious. Religious faith instead of being 
the only source of goodness seems only one of many. The 
Saturday Review calmly acquiesces in this and says we want 
saints as we want painters, but it would never do for all people 
to turn painters or to act chiefly on religious beliefs. But the 
truth which the painter devotes himself to is not the one thing 
needful for men; the truth which the saint devotes himself to, 
if truth at all, is the one thing needful." 



Roman Catholic v. Evangelical 501 



Modern Christianity 

"When I compare our Christianity with the Apostolic, the 
main difference seems to me to be that we are without hope. 
Faith and Charity we have, or perhaps, more strictly speaking, 
belief and benevolence, but hope has vanished and has not left 
any deputy. The early Christian felt that he belonged to an 
army that must go on conquering and that he would share its 
conquests. Now Christianity no longer seems a conquering 
power in this world, and the thought of the next world causes 
more fear than hope. If the choice were offered I have no 
doubt the majority of Christians would now compound for 
annihilation." 

Nature red in tooth and claw 

" Some time ago at Guildford I was much disturbed at 
finding a bird on the garden path in convulsions. All sorts of 
questions about Nature and Providence rushed into my mind, 
but on further reflection I thought, ' How foolish to be thus 
disturbed by the sufferings of a single bird when the delight of 
hundreds of birds flying about in this garden and singing from 
day to day has never once raised my mind to Him who has 
given them this happiness !" 

Nullius addictus 

"26. 8. 88. A Roman Catholic considers himself bound 
to receive what is given him. An Evangelical after talking 
about the right of private judgment calmly ' sits under ' some 
' converted ' preacher. But what are we to do who are neither 
Roman Catholics nor Evangelicals? Heaven knows I have 
no confidence in my own judgment or insight, and I would 



502 R. H. Quick 

gladly 'sit under' one of the many men whose judgment and 
insight are far superior to my own. But under which is it to 
be? I have a high respect for Cardinal Newman, both his 
intellectual power and his spiritual insight, but to join the 
Church of Rome with my present Ansicht would be an im- 
possibility. Shall I look for guidance to an Evangelical like 
Vaughan of Brighton, who in some ways commands my highest 
respect? The scientific spirit of the age (little as I know about 
science) has so affected me that I can no longer accept the 
Mosaic creation, the Flood, etc., as a child does." 

Death and personal Identity 

"8. 12. 88. One of the greatest puzzles of life to my mind is 
the lack of proportion between the importance of things and the 
way they affect us. The Trappists when they may say nothing 
else may say, ' II faut mourir.' The consequence of this 
constant repetition must be that the words must lose their 
meaning and no more bring up the thought of death than 
' Good-bye ' brings up to us the thought of God. And even 
the thought of death itself does not increase in effect as we 
reflect more and more on its importance. Is there anything 
eternal? Have we, can we have, any share in it? There is 
nothing of any real importance except the answer to these 
questions or, as far as we are concerned, the answer to the last 
of them. P'or if in a few years there will be nothing left of me 
in the sum of things except an 'unpleasant body,' whether the 
laws of matter, whether matter itself is eternal is to me not of 
the slightest consequence. Lately I have felt perplexed by 
the constant flux of things. The question of identity which 
Bishop Butler thinks so simple does not seem at all simple to 
me. My dear little girl is now nearly six. What wonderful 
changes she has already passed through ! Charles Lamb says 
he can think of his boy self and be proud of it without any 
feeling of self-satisfaction or conceit. I can look back to 



Personal ide7^tity 503 

several Doras, each very lovely and very dear. The present 
is a very dear good little girl, but the heavenly beauty which 
she had when about two years old is as much a thing of the 
past as the morning's sunrise. So in the course of nature we 
come to perfection and in some respects very early, and we 
lose that perfection just as a flower is soon overblown. 
Other things advance, some we would fain hope till there is 
here no further change. But in what consists the identity of 
the child of two and the decrepit old man or woman of 80 years 
afterwards? We believe nevertheless that there is an Eternal 
and we hope that He is drawing us to Himself. But the thought 
is obscured in our minds by all sorts of trumpery, ' it moves us 
not.' It does not naturally come up in my mind as something 
of to-day does — some letters I have written to the local paper 
about drains, or to the Spectator on the iniquities of the 
Code." 

The future life 

"28. 4. 81. Renan has been lecturing in London. In 
one of his lectures on Marcus Aurelius there was a remarkable 
passage in which he argued that when M. Aurelius acquiesces 
in the thought of annihilation he was going too far. If there is 
nothing for us beyond this life, said Renan, we must curse the 
Gods. The Controlling Mind in that case can have no pre- 
ference for virtue, nay, it may prefer vice. I cannot go with 
Renan here. What is it that gives us our belief in the superior- 
ity of virtue ? Surely it is the constitution of things in which we 
find ourselves, and from that constitution we may learn the 
preference of the Controlling Mind. And as far as I can judge, 
vice is utterly stupid and virtue unutterably wise whether there 
is a hereafter or not. But in one respect, if there is no here- 
after the Controlling Mind would differ very widely from what 
we assume to be its copy, the mind of men. We all want to 
improve. It is not excellence that delights us but improvement. 



504 R. H. Quick 

Now if we put a future life out of account the course of things 
does not show any trace of this love of improvement. One 
of the most striking passages I know in classical literature is 
that in the De Senectute when Cicero finding himself driven into 
a corner by the ever increasing infirmities of the aged says, ' It 
is not likely that Nature is as it were a bungling poet and winds 
up with a Fifth Act manque.' But if old age is indeed the last 
act, this is just what she does, and we must rank her as an 
iners poeta. For my part I am inclined to think that some of 
our faculties (at least the imagination) come to their perfection 
in childhood. I can remember when I could delight myself 
or terrify myself with mental pictures. Now I can't form such 
pictures at all, and the most skilful authors fail to do so for me. 
Matthew Arnold thinks that Wordsworth exaggerates about the 
superiority of childhood and what he remembers of it as having 
' the glory and the freshness of a dream,' but I doubt if he 
does. One looks at the sea and remembers the thrill of delight 
the sight gave one as a boy ; . or one hears the hiss of pebbles 
as they are drawn back with the wave and one remembers the 
weird feelings the sound used to awaken in one. St. Paul 
speaks as if the manly way of looking at things was in every 
respect above the child's way, but to me it does not seem so. 
Thus the middle-aged man loses the physical activity of the 
young man and also the receptivity of mind. The old man 
seems to lose in every way. Cicero tries to make out that 
there is an excellence proper to old age, and certainly the 
purely critical and deliberative faculty of the mind does go on 
improving after everything else has waned, but even this power 
is lost in extreme old age. So Nature fails to satisfy the desire 
of the mind that there shall be a good end. Either then the 
controlling mind has something in store for us or we learn 
nothing of that mind from the mind of men." 



A Harrow Boys Essay 505 



VARIA 

Jules Simon 

"In a speech at a prize-giving, Jules Simon repeats his two 
favourite maxims, which are worth remembering. The first 
he gave in LEcole, some twenty years ago : < Le peuple qui 
a les meilleures ecoles est le premier peuple ; s'il ne l'est pas 
aujourd'hui il le sera demain.' His second maxim is this : 
' II faut donner a instruction primaire tous les millions dont 
il a besoin et ne pas les regretter.' Six years after enouncing 
this maxim he became Minister of Instruction, and, like other 
people, found he could not carry out his own principle. He 
added four millions to the budget, and Thiers refused to give 
them. Thereupon Simon sent in his resignation, and Thiers 
finally compromised, allowing him half the sum. This was 
in 1872 for the budget of 1873." 

A Harrow Boy's Essay 

{Compare Spartan and English Education) 

" ' The education of a Spartan and of an English boy were 
very much the same. They both undergo a great many hard- 
ships. One difference is that deformed babies in Sparta were 
killed on a mountain by their mothers, and deformed English 
babies are generally killed by doctors and surgeons. Then 
they both go to schools, but the one was flogged on an altar 
till the blood came, the other is stripped on the block in 
Fourth Form room. The Spartan boy was given a small 
quantity of good food, the English boy a small quantity of 
bad. One had to hunt for it on the mountains, and the 
other in Fuller's [the Harrow tuck shop]. One cost labour, 
the other money. The Spartan was encouraged to steal, but 
was punished if found out; the English boy is discouraged 



506 R. H. Quick 

from stealing and punished if not found out [a topical allu- 
sion] . The Spartans were allowed to buy very little, and had 
very little money. English boys are restricted in the same 
way soon after the beginning of term. But the Spartans 
used bars of iron, while the English use gold and silver, 
and, later on, copper. The Spartan mothers used to tell 
their sons to come back with the shield or on it, while the 
English mothers tell their sons to come back with a copy [a 
prize] or without oue. On the whole a Spartan boy was 
rather the best off, because in their history there is no men- 
tion of Greek verb card punishments, reps., compulsory foot- 
ball, going to bathe only once a day, bills [roll-call], cricket 
fagging, several other things, and extra school.' " 

Memory of words without ideas 

" Miss Yonge, in her Landmarks, tells about the Spartan 
children being whipped, and also gives the story of the mother 
and the shield. These stories were blended thus by a Hurst 
boy : ' The Spartans were a brave and hardy people. The 
boys were whipped naked before the temple of Artemis. Their 
mother stood by and cried, "With it or upon it." ' What the 
mother meant by ' With it or upon it ' the boy never troubled 
himself to think ; so, the phrase conveying no idea to his 
mind, came in as appropriately in one story as in the other. 
Here is another instance of the words learnt being mere 
sounds to the learner. In another of Miss Yonge's books is 
an account of the Government of the United States. After 
describing the constitution of one of the Assemblies, she 
adds, ' Each State has a similar machinery.' I asked a boy, 
'How is America governed?' The boy has prepared his 
lesson, so rummages in his memory for the right word. ' I 
know, Sir,' he cries to prevent the question passing, and 
then the word dawns upon him and he bursts out, ' By 
machinery, Sir.' " 



Varia 507 



Learning and knowing 

" There is a story of a child expressing surprise at finding 
out something from experience which had long been taken in 
as a lesson only. When asked whether he had not learnt that 
in such and such a book, he said, ' I learnt it, but I did not 
know it.' " 

A stupid boy 

" Richardson of Marlborough coached a stupid boy for an 
examination in French. The boy would not for a long time 
use etre with verbs of motion, so Richardson kept him at ' he 
had set out,' &c, till he got it into his head at last. After 
the examination he said he had not done very well in the 
paper, but one thing he had got right. The question was 
about ' set out.' Richardson looked at the paper and found, 
' He had set out the table,' II etait parti la table" 

How to lengthen life 

{A lecture on Psychology at the Home and Colonial} 

" By the way, people who want to lengthen their lives 
should take every opportunity of being bored. Tedium mul- 
tiplies every minute by three at least. Here is one end 
served by sermons, which has never, as far as I know, been 
mentioned." 

Grammar does not insure correct use of language 

" R. M. is one of the first authorities we have in English 
grammar. He was lately examining viva voce, when one of 
the class made a statement that did not please M. ' Where 
did you get that from ? ' asked M. ' Morell,' said the boy. 



508 R. H. Quick 

1 Morell ! he don't know nothing about it.' So accuracy in 
the use of language must come by imitation, not by rule. 

"The English are very keen on the fact that theory does 
not, in many cases, guide practice as well as use and wont. 
But it does guide it and often correct it, which use and wont 
cannot do. Some changes may have come in our language, 
as they certainly have done in spelling, from theoretical con- 
siderations. At all events, there is no danger of our over- 
doing theory at present. I should very much like to see if 
theory would do anything for us in generalising on mental 
phenomena." 

Dr Hanna 

" Dr Hanna, the Rector of the Edinburgh Academy, seems 
to have been a very able man who had great influence with 
the boys. He was sometimes deceived, however. He allowed 
hearing by heart to be done by top boys in his presence, 
while he corrected exercises. By means of holding the book 
upside down the hearer managed to let the sayer read instead 
of repeating, which saved much trouble. Hanna never found 
it out till one day, a dispute arising between two boys, he 
snatched the book and found that the boy who had been going 
on with great fluency didn't know a word." 

"Mother's Truth keeps constant youth'''' 

" Trench gives, as an instance of a proverb being found in 
three languages : ' Mutter-treu wird taglich neu. Tendresse 
maternelle toujours se renouvelle. Mother's truth keeps con- 
stant youth.' It seems to me that the English form might 
refer to something different. We learn in early childhood a 
vast amount of truth which is of such manifold application 
that it can never lie bedridden in the soul, but the experi- 
ence of the man only brings this truth home to him more 
forcibly the longer he lives, so that it keeps constant youth. 



Varia 509 

At every fresh application it comes to him again with the 
freshness of a new discovery." 

Hard work 

"The fact is, I don't really know what hard work is. 
Robertson tells me that Temple (the Bishop of London) 
would sometimes work two days and two nights at a stretch. 
Butler says that he has worked at an examination all night 
and gone into first school as usual. Broderick says that 
Roundell Palmer sometimes works all night, and (Loid Jus- 
tice) Coleridge begins at four in the morning." 

The old gentleman of the ancien regime 

" Some of the old gentlemen [at Lord's] were of a type 
which, if I am not mistaken, is fast becoming impossible, 
owing to the levelling of class distinction. The English 
gentleman I am now thinking of has as perfect conscious- 
ness of class distinctions as I have of the distinction be- 
tween youth and manhood. That he should receive respect 
from his social inferiors seems to him as much a matter of 
course as I think it that a boy in the school should touch 
his hat to me. The old gentleman of this type always looks 
his part. His dress, simple as it is, has something about it 
as distinctive as a uniform, and yet this something escapes 
analysis. When this old gentleman is a good-hearted man 
(as he mostly is), one cannot but feel a liking, almost an 
affection, for him ; his manners are so perfect, his content- 
ment with the world, himself included, is so genial. But 
he is an esprit borne with a vengeance, and one talks to him 
much as one talks to a child." 

Two good stories 

" Bell, of Christ's Hospital, told us of a German professor 
who was found by a friend travelling luxuriously in a first-class 



510 R. H. Quick 

carriage contrary to his wont. His friend asked how it was, 
and the professor explained that it was his wedding trip. 
' Where is the Frau Professorin ? ' asked the friend. ' She is 
at home : we could not afford both to travel.' 

" I have been looking at Nonnius Marcellus in Hachette's 
edition. He has an article on eliminare, and quotes its use 
in Ennius and Attius. I remember meeting with the word 
in Tertullian's Apology. Api'opos of Nonnius I heard a good 
story of Robinson Ellis. Shortly after the war of '70 a man 
told Ellis that he had just come from Sedan. ' Have you, 
indeed,' said Ellis ; ' that's very interesting. The first edition 
of Nonnius Marcellus was published at Sedan.' " 

Eaves-dropping 

"There is a strong prejudice against eaves-dropping, but 

I confess I always like to hear what people say when they 
are not under the same restraints as they are when they ad- 
dress me. I don't gratify my taste as a rule, but if I have 
a chance of listening to the talk of children amongst them- 
selves, I do. In the streets I always prick up my ears. One 
thus gets occasional glimpses into a different world to one's 
own. Very often I have heard things that shocked me. 
Still, though one would rather think of children as simple- 
minded, perhaps it is better we should know them as they 
are, not as we wish that they were. 

" On Sunday last, however, I overheard a scrap of conver- 
sation that greatly pleased me. It was in town. Some little 
boys, none of them more than ten years old, were talking 
about their daily life — the usual ' biography and history,' as 
Carlyle says — and one boy said, in a pretty, childish voice, 

I I always do the best I can for the governor, for he's a 
good governor and patient. If ever I do anything wrong....' 
The rest was lost, as the boys got out of hearing. How 
little we think of our dependents' thoughts about us ! The 



Varia 511 

'governor' spoken of had little notion, I expect, that the 
child gave him credit for his patience. We know we don't 
understand children, and we assume that they don't under- 
stand us ; but they probably know more of us than we do 
of them. We play a much larger part in their lives than 
they do in ours. As we get older our interests get less and 
less personal. General truths come first; persons are often 
thought of only in connection with them. But with the young 
(as always perhaps with most women) the personal comes 
first, and they see general truths only through their interest 
in persons." 

A lapsus linguae 

" An inaugural lecture at the London Hospital by Erichsen, 
in which the lecturer said some odd things. 'There is one 
department of medicine,' said he, ' in which we do not seem 
to make progress ; the department, that is, which is concerned 
with the treatment of diseases.' He dwelt on various tests of 
methods, among them, statistics. Statistics were often useful, 
and should not be neglected. ' There is, e.g.,' he said, ' a 
certain operation which is often performed successfully, but 
when we test it by statistics we find that the result is always 
fatal.' Finally, in his excitement, at the close the lecturer 
waxed eloquent, but must have misread his MS. 'When I 
see the young faces before me (said he), I cannot escape the 
melancholy thought how few of you will ever attain the jail 
your honourable exertions so well deserve.' " 

The Times caught napping 

"An editor of the Times (Chenery) had on one occasion 
to write an article after dining, not wisely, but too well. Next 
morning he could not for the life of him remember what he 
had said, and was exceedingly uncomfortable till the Times 
appeared and his article proved to be as colourless as usual. 



512 R. H. Quick 

Perhaps a similar incident has occurred again. The first leader 
in the Times to-day (Saturday, 19 Jan. 1878) calls Thursday 
yesterday and speaks of ' this evening's debate.' " 

Mr Gladstone at Ho?ne 

"25. 1. 80. L. told me the other day of his dining at 
Hawarden during the Bulgarian excitement. What struck L. 
was Gladstone's wonderful grasp of every kind of subject, 
and his exact information even about out-of-the-way things 
He was also struck by the total want of humour both in 
Mr and Mrs Gladstone. When the Globe newspaper came 
in, Mrs Gladstone looked at it and said quite seriously, ' O 
William, there are such shocking things about you ! ' and she 
then proceeded to read them aloud. They both mourned over 
the perusal, till Gladstone said at length, ' My dear, I think we 
have had enough, this is not profitable reading.' " 

W. T. Harris 

"26 Aug. 1880. Brussels. Mr William T. Harris, who 
has just given up the superintendency of the schools of 
St Louis, Mo., says he has instituted a number of super- 
intendents whose business it is to point out things to the 
teachers. Some of these are so good, says Mr Harris, that 
they will make a passable teacher of anyone, however bad 
naturally. The plan is to call attention to one weak point 
at a time. On his next visit the inspector observes whether 
there is any improvement, and keeps on till he gets it put 
right. Then he goes on to something else." 

"27 Aug. '80. I spent last evening with Mr W. T. Harris 
and Miss Brackett. Mr Harris I take to be one of the best 
specimens of our American cousins I have met with. One 
hears a great deal about the ' cuteness ' of the Americans, 
but what strikes me in the best of them I have met is a 



Dr Harris on Education 513 

childlike simplicity. They talk away about what interests 
them as the best sort of schoolboy does. In the case of 
Dr Harris one finds a quiet-mannered man of about fifty, 
with all the enthusiasm of a boy. He delights in Walter 
Scott. ' When I have been overworked/ he said, ' I read 
one of the Waverleys which I remember least well, and that 
is as good as a three weeks' holiday.' And he is looking 
forward to a trip to Scotland to hunt up all the sites. It is 
astonishing to find a man with energy that suffices for so 
many pursuits. He is great in Hegelian philosophy, which 
affects all his thoughts, and he is editor of a Journal of 
Philosophy. Then comes his wonderful activity in the school- 
world. He is now going to make a study of the educational 
system of England. 

" Dr Harris has interested me in his original view of 
education. Almost all the great writers on education, from 
Montaigne downwards, have more or less depreciated book- 
learning. This tendency has been strengthened by the Emile, 
and by the subsequent writings of Pestalozzi and Froebel. 
Rousseau and his followers look on education simply as a 
developing of the inborn faculties of the child. Their fa- 
vourite illustrations are drawn from the vegetable world. The 
educator is the gardener, &c. But Dr Harris takes a dif- 
ferent view of education. He says everyone who is born in an 
advanced civilisation like ours neither can nor ought to be 
brought up like the 'child of nature,' who owes nothing to 
his progenitor except a healthy body. The child now-a- 
days is the inheritor of a vast intellectual patrimony, and it 
is the business of education to put him in possession of his 
patrimony. Rousseau's depreciation of all that has been al- 
ready thought and done is simply absurd. In everything we 
must take our stand on the foundations already laid, and 
must work upon them. We should no more despise the 
work of our spiritual ancestors than if we were polyps in a 
coral reef. Now the grand intellectual tradition passes from 

2L 



514 R. If. Quick 

one generation to another by means of language, and more 
particularly by written language, i.e. by books. The chief 
function of education is, then, to enable the educated to use 
books. The study of foreign languages, too, gives us a con- 
sciousness of other ways of thinking such as can be obtained 
by no other study. The study of Greek is especially valuable 
to Englishmen because the Greeks had just what the Romans 
and the English want, the habit of looking round them and 
before them with open eyes, not tearing on like a locomotive 
engine, whether on the rails or off. It is to me extremely 
interesting to compare this notion of education, which makes 
it consist in putting us au courant with the civilisation into 
which we are born, with the notion of education which at- 
taches no importance to knowledge as such, and denies the 
existence of knowledge not acquired by Anschauung" 

American Institutions 

"30. 7. 81. Yesterday I saw, at Morley's Hotel, President 
F. A. P. Barnard, of Columbia College, N. Y. He was very 
anxious that women should have the same instructors as men. 
It would not do for them merely to be taught the same things 
or by the same books : they must come in contact with first- 
rate teachers. Agassiz once said that a student would gain 
more from a first-rate man in two months than from an ordi- 
nary man in twenty years. 

" Barnard spoke of the absurdities that come of their po- 
litical appointments. One man, who was run in to be director 
of some great Government puddling works, went after his ap- 
pointment to a professor of geology and inquired of him what 
puddling was. Another man, who had failed to get some 
small post in the' College of Mississippi, applied for the post 
of president when it fell vacant. In his letter to the trustees 
who elected he wrote, ' Try me for a year, and I pledge myself 
to resign if I have not given satisfaction to the Trustees and 
the Democratic Party.' " 



Thoughts on an idol 515 

On an idol at the British Museum 

"25. 8. 81. Everyone who visits the British Museum 
must observe outside the building, and close to the entrance- 
door, a huge monolith carved roughly into something like 
the human form, an idol probably from ancient Egypt or 
Nineveh. Most of the British public give it a vacant stare 
and pass on, but it might awaken some strange thoughts in 
them. Can the universe of the Cockney of the 19th century 
be the same as the universe of the men who carved the 
image to represent their idea of the divine 3000 years ago? 
We cannot enter into the thoughts of those men any more 
than they could enter into ours. We have changed indeed, 
but is the change all progress? Was their Weltansicht when 
it differed from ours all wrong? Is ours all right? We have 
indeed made many wonderful discoveries, and the rich among 
us pass through life much more comfortably than the people 
of old, and what is much better, they have little to fear from 
the lawless violence of the great ; but as for what really raises 
a man above the flux of material things — faith in the un- 
seen — we seem as low in the scale as human beings ever 
were. The ordinary Cockney who stares at the image at the 
British Museum and thinks (if he thinks at all), 'What fools 
those old fellows must have been to worship such a thing as 
that ! ' perhaps is not much the wiser for having given up wor- 
ship altogether." 

Babel 

" 18. 6. 82. Seeley long ago said that the schoolmaster 
stopped the progress of the building up of young knowledge 
by stepping in and confounding the language. He 

" ' In derision sets 
Upon their tongues a various spirit, to raze 
Quite out their native language ; and, instead, 
To sow a jangling noise of words unknown.' 

"' Paradise Lost, xn. 52-55." 



5 16 R. H. Quick 



A coincidence 

" 1 6. 5. 83. The following coincidence is so odd that I 
put it down while I can do so accurately. 

"About twenty years ago I was in a third-class carriage on 
the railway between Vienna and Trieste, and with me was 
J. Spittal. It was a carriage where you could see from end 
to end. I don't know what the peasants in the next com- 
partment were about ; I fancy they tried to force a window 
up or down. Anyhow they broke it and we heard the smash, 
though at the minute we were not looking and did not see 
the window broken. At the next station a soldier got in. 
The guard of the train kept wrangling with the peasants, 
who stoutly denied having broken the window. The guard 
declared it was very hard on him, as he should have to pay. 
At length the soldier seemed struck with the same view, and 
he offered his evidence as having seen the peasants break 
the window. This naturally astonished us, as we knew that, 
though the peasants had broken the window, the soldier was 
not there when it was done. At Trieste we saw the peasants 
marched off by the guard with the soldier for witness. 

" Now, this story Spittal and I have no doubt repeated to 
different people, but in my case certainly not for years, for it 
has not been a favourite of mine, and I fancy not of his. 

" Last night I was with Storr, in Charles Munro's in Caius, 
when Storr said a friend of his had been in a crowded train 
at Hendon, where the squash was so great that a window was 
broken. At the next station a sailor (he afterwards said he 
meant a soldier) got in and afterwards backed up the guard 
and swore he had seen the window broken, &c, &c. Every 
incident was the same. 

"The story must be our story, but how can it have got 
naturalised here long after it ought to have been forgotten 
according to all rules of probability ? " 



Varia 5 1 7 



Importance of externals 

" It is odd that words should depend for their effect on 
the voice or even the type, yet so it is. I take a pencil and 
write on a sheet of note-paper a notice of a night-school to 
be held in the National Schools, and I can hardly recognise 
my own notice when it comes back as a striking poster with 
the important words an inch tall and in letters a quarter of an 
inch thick." 

Mostly in the tunnel 

" 7. 3. 86. (On a journey from Florence to Genoa.) 
" I once passed over a railway the greater part of which is 
a series of tunnels. Between the tunnels we got most lovely 
peeps of the Mediterranean, with villages on the cliffs over it, 
the houses sometimes nestling in hollows right down to the 
water. 

"This journey was an image of our ordinary lives. A 
great part of our time we are rushing along in the dark, 
seeing nothing but what we can put our hands on. We 
believe that the sun is shining, but no ray gives us evidence 
of it. But now and then we are astonished by glimpses of 
a glorious world which is there all the time and we almost 
forgot it." 

Battle of the Alma 

" 6 Dec. '88. Yesterday I had a talk with Mr Harrison, 
Sr, of Harrison and Sons, who print the London Gazette. 
He told me he was with the Duke of Newcastle when the 
news of the victory of the Alma came in 1854. It was be- 
tween 5 and 6 o'clock, when all the evening papers were 
out. The Duke asked how it would be possible to spread 
the news that night. Mr Harrison suggested that the tid- 
ings should be announced at the theatres. The Duke caught 



518 R. H. Quick 

at the suggestion and Mr Harrison sent down his head man 
(much to his disgust, for he hated theatres) to interview the 
manager at each, and the news was given out from the stage 
among the wildest excitement. Mr Harrison himself went 
to the Mansion House and had the Lord Mayor fetched 
out from a Sheriffs' dinner. In those days there was great 
difficulty in procuring news about the killed and wounded. 
Mr Harrison had to remonstrate with some ladies who had 
forced their way into the printing-office. They consented to 
go only on his undertaking to find out all he could for 
them. On consulting the list he found that he had very 
bad news for them, and he called aside a gentleman who 
was with them and told him to get them home and break 
it to them there." 

A kid seethed in goafs milk 

"25 May, '79. An old Dutchman staying here (Hotel 
Taunus, Schwalbach) has been telling us how brutally chil- 
dren were beaten in his youth. He remembers one occasion 
on which he met with great injustice. One Monday he was 
going to school with a written exercise he had done on the 
Saturday. He put down his books and exercise to have a 
game with another boy and a goat came and ate up the 
exercise. He went into school and sat shaking with fear for 
an hour, when he began to hope that he was not going to 
be asked for his exercise ; but he hoped too soon. He was 
called upon to produce it, and when he told his story he 
got a double beating, one for idleness and one for lying." 

Dean Bradley at Rugby 

"4 Nov. '79. Dined yesterday at Henry Sidgwick's. 
Sidgwick told stories of the power Bradley used to get over 
boys at Rugby. He did it both by sarcasm and by a kind 



Rugby reminiscences 519 

of flattery. He would say, ' Jones, you have not brought me 
any Latin prose.' ' Yes, Sir, I put it on your desk.' ' Oh ! 
this is what you call Latin prose ! ' On one occasion a boy 
who was understood to have come into his property and gave 
himself airs accordingly was sitting with his arms folded, when 
Bradley called to him, 'X., I wish you would look a little less 
like a retired statesman.' Sidgwick said that Jevons was a 
dull boy at school, and in his writing one saw that this was 
possible. Most original thinkers are independent because 
original, but he is original because independent. He can't 
understand a line of thought without thinking the thing out 
for himself, and in doing this he becomes original. Seeley 
quoted Hales, who was at Louth School where Tennyson 
had been ; and when Tennyson was made Poet Laureate 
the Headmaster told the boys this must be an encourage- 
ment to the most backward among them, as Tennyson owed 
his new honour purely to hard work." 

Reminiscences of Arnold and Longley 

" Mr J. W. Cunningham remembers Stanley at Rugby. 
I asked him (J. W. C.) about Arnold. He said the boys 
feared him very much, and a great impression of his severity 
had remained with him. His influence was due a good deal 
to his being so truly grieved when anything went wrong. He 
did all he could to encourage originality. Mr Cunningham 
once took to his tutor as an essay some historical tables he 
had made in parallel columns and worked out with pains. 
The tutor objected it was not an essay. Cunningham said 
he thought Dr Arnold would like it. ' He may, perhaps ; I 
don't,' was the answer. Arnold ■ did like it very much, and 
criticised it very carefully. 

" Mr Cunningham said the grand lesson he had learnt 
from Arnold was the feeling of responsibility. Arnold seems 
to have been very stern, and never to have unbent in the 



520 R. H. Quick 

school. He never had anything to do with the games, and 
never looked on at them. 

" Cunningham remembers his surprise when he went for 
the first time as a Sixth Form boy to dine with Dr Arnold 
and found the doctor lying on his back with children clam- 
bering about him. Arnold laughed when he came in, and 
said, ' You see I can't get up.' A similar story is told, I 
think, in Stanley's Arnold. 

" Cunningham's story, told him by Archbishop Longley, of 
the state of Harrow in Longley 's time, is wonderful. Longley, 
coming out of Oldfield House at 10.30 at night, saw a boy 
near him. He gave chase and caught the boy by the tail. 
The tail came off and the boy escaped. Next morning all the 
Sixth came up to first school with only one tail ! " 

Dr Arnold 

" I was talking to Bull (of Harrow) about Arnold. Bull 
was in Lower Bench of Sixth at Rugby under him. Arnold 
was in Bull's mind what he is depicted in Tom Brown. 

" The horror of ignorance which Arnold showed was surely 
a weakness. He turned David Vaughan down three places in 
the Sixth for not knowing what the Kalends were." 

A Jesuit Plan in English Schools 

"8. 10. 87. Sir Francis Doyle tells how, in a school he 
went to, kept by one Clement, a Frenchman, any boy who 
was overheard speaking English by a schoolmate who had 
' the mark ' could pass the mark on to him, and the boy who 
finally had it was punished. In this case ' Prenez la marque ' 
was not accompanied by any visible sign, but I remember the 
practice was in vogue at Dempster's in my day, and an actual 
mark (a bit of wood) was passed on. Doyle tells that the 
boys conspired to minimise the nuisance, and so did we. 



The Ways of Editors 521 

With us it was in force in schooltime only, and we indulged 
in a kind of French not spoken at Stratford-atte-Bow or any- 
where else ; ' Lendez moi un knife ' was called by us French. 
It is odd that a detestable plan of the Jesuits got a hold in 
English private schools." 

Experience of Editors 

" In considering literature as a profession, the writer [in 
Spectator, Dec. 4, '79] assumes that editors are discerning 
people, and that an enlightened regard for their own inter- 
ests makes them ready to see literary ability and to employ 
it. But, as far as I can judge, facts are the other way. The 
editor, I take it, is blinded by conventions. He is accus- 
tomed to a certain sort of article, and can perhaps (when he 
takes the trouble) decide whether an article of this kind is 
good or bad, but anything not exactly falling in with these 
conventions seems to him an abortion. I suppose the aver- 
age editor is not a better critic than the Edinburgh Reviewer 
who began his article on Wordsworth's poetry, 'This will 
never do,' or the reviewer who told Keats to go back to 
his gallipots. No publisher's reader could see any merit in 
the Rejected Addresses or in Washington Irving 's Sketch Book. 
So I doubt the editor's discernment beyond a very narrow 
range. Then again, one supposes a regard to their own in- 
terests will make them anxious to recognise and employ a 
good man ; but in point of fact things are very much deter- 
mined by haphazard or by personal considerations. It is, 
of course, to the grocer's interest to buy good and cheap 
coffee and tea, and it makes no manner of difference to 
him whether the traveller be an acquaintance or not, as he 
comes from a firm not likely to cheat ; but in point of fact 
the grocers make a sort of connection with the traveller, 
and, if they like him, continue to buy of him even when he 
changes his firm. Personal liking has more influence than 



522 R. H, Quick 

the price of his goods. So it is throughout life. Peopie will 
do this or that to oblige a friend when they won't do it for 
any other reason. 

"Of course anybody reading this will say, 'You have 
tried to get your own writings into papers and magazines; 
you have generally failed, and so you suppose the editors 
must be careless or stupid. The more natural inference 
would be that you sent them what was not good for much.' 
But I am not judging by my own experience only. When 
I was at Harrow I sent to the Graphic and the Illustrated 
about the Tercentenary, and enclosed tickets for the lunch. 
I did the same when the Prince of Wales came to Speeches. 
Neither paper would do anything. At the same time they 
had a picture of the Prince of Wales giving prizes at New 
Cross. Here was a case of sheer carelessness in one case 
and probably of personal motive in the other. I must say I 
expected, when I was appointed by the University to lecture, 
that some magazine or other would have taken my intro- 
ductory lecture, but Grove and Tulloch refused promptly. 
The result I have come to is that editors like to keep to a 
certain set of contributors whom they can depend on for 
giving them the sort of thing they want, at the time they 
want it, and I fancy it is hard to push oneself into this set. 
When they draw from other sources it is to oblige a friend or 
to have a name that is known to the public." 

Chad the cricketer 

" 1 6 Nov. '75. Spent from Saturday to Monday at 
Harrow. 

" G. O. Trevelyan said he remembered Steel's house 
almost illuminating at the news that a celebrated bully had 
lost an arm at the battle of Inkerman. Mr Ponsonby told an 
amusing story of old Chad. Chad was celebrated for single- 
wicket matches, and had a marvellous skill in throwing up. 



A cricket story 523 

In some match the other man, in running, got between him 
and the wicket. Chad stood this a time or two and then 
threw right at him, and, taking him in the small of the back, 
dropped him, and there he lay unable to move. ' And what 
did you do, Chad ? ' the boys would ask Chad as he told his 
favourite story. ' Well,' said Chad, ' I just went and picked 
up the ball and put down his wicket.' " 



524 R. H. Quick 



CRITICISMS OF BOOKS 

Kiddle and Schemes Cyclopcedia of Education 

"I have to-day (22. 8. 77) received from the publishers 
a nicely bound copy of Kiddle and Schem's Cyclopcedia of 
Education. In form the book is excellent, and I have no 
doubt it will be very useful ; but, after looking through a 
number of articles, I don't find much wisdom. Of the eyes 
which do glare without how few can see ! In this book, of 
course, space has to be economised, but in many cases the 
writer finds room for quite unimportant particulars about a 
man's life and omits to say what use the man was to edu- 
cation. In the sketch of the History of Education Pestalozzi 
is said to have . been remarkable only for his enthusiasm ! 
F. A. Wolf is not considered worthy of notice. Most articles 
give at the end names of authorities, but they should give 
under the bibliography rather more than the names of the 
books. The writer of Jacotot gives me as his principal au- 
thority but he has not made out much about Jacotot, and 
says that his method of teaching foreign languages was just 
the same as Hamilton's ! On the whole one is convinced 
more than ever that most writing is mere babble, and that 
the great thing is to get wise writing, be it in ever so small 
quantities, and burn the rest. The U. S. people go in too 
much for quantity. Vivre de peu should be the rule for mind 
as well as body." 

Quarterly Review t ' Our Schools and Schoolmasters} 

Jan. '79. 

"On p. 178 is an onslaught on 'Pedagogy,' but a very 
clumsy one. As the man is not trying to speak the truth, 
it is hardly worth noticing what he says. He gives it as his 



The Latin Primer 525 

opinion that 'the new science might have found a fitting 
home amongst the inhabitants of Laputa.' He next goes on 
to abuse with some success the new swarm of text-books and 
handbooks to every conceivable subject. At the end is an 
odd passage which only a stupid man would append to an 
attack on Pedagogy. ' If our education is to be guided in 
the full eye of Parliament, if we are to be assured that every 
step forward is to be weighed and calculated beforehand, if 
we are to provide against the danger of sudden reaction and 
the extravagance of individual whims and fancies, we must 
[investigate the science of education? oh no ! we must] ac- 
cept that organisation of the central authority upon which 
Lord Hampton has for some years insisted with indubi- 
table [!] logic, and we must establish with as little delay as 
may be a Ministry of Public Instruction prepared to use to 
the full, and yet moderate where needful, all the educational 
energy of the nation.' The Minister is to have a council 
of men selected for the purpose who will stimulate where 
needful, and will check whimsical extravagance and waste. 
At present we may drift without taking note of our own 
progress or recognising the point of the compass towards 
which we move." 

(This criticism was pursued in a letter to Spectator, 1 Feb. '79.) 



The Public School Latin Primer 

"29. 9. 82. As my boys will probably have the Latin 
Primer at their next school, I have just been looking at it 
to see if I can grind them up in it, but what an astoundingly 
bad book it is ! I do not think I am prejudiced ; I have a 
great respect for Kennedy, and he has treated me with great 
kindness ; but he can know nothing of elementary teaching, 
and the book bewilders beginners with useless things and 
does not give prominence to many things that are really 



526 R. H. Quick 

useful. Besides, it teaches some things that are positively 

wrong." 

(Detailed criticisms follow.) 

An ideal History of Education 

" 27. 7. 85. James Ward would not make the history 
simply a study of the reformers. He would try to ascer- 
tain : 1 st. what each generation took the child to be ; 2nd. 
what it endeavoured to do for the child ; 3rd. what means 
it employed. The old fault was the same as we find among 
ignorant people now. They look upon children simply as 
inferior men and women, and want to give just that know- 
ledge that will come in useful by and by." 

German Fach-literatur 

"19. 11. 88. I have been looking at my German educa- 
tional books. What a fearful quantity has been written about 
everything ! To master any small corner of the subject one 
needs a German's industry and a German's habit of special- 
ising. But we want light, and most of these Germans con- 
tribute fuel only, and in many cases they pile up for fuel 
stuff that won't burn. England and France contribute few 
fuel collectors, but sometimes we have a man who can set 
light to the fuel, and he is the valuable man after all. As 
yet we have had among English writers on the history of edu- 
cation no Carlyle or Seeley, or even a Macaulay. In Germany 
the men of ideas can't write. They have a Pestalozzi and a 
Froebel, but no Rousseau." 

A. Bain's Education as a Science 

"5 Feb. '79. I have been getting on with Bain, but it 
is a dull book. For what class of readers is it written? 
The people who know all about mental science will not 
care enough for education to read a book about the appli- 
cation of this science to education, and I am quite sure 



Bains ' Education ' 527 

that most people who have to do with education are too 
ignorant of mental science to be able to get through the 

book with understanding or interest In limine comes an 

antipathy to scientific treatment of some parts of the subject. 
Bain himself says he should not like to turn justice into a 
machine and be able to put certain evidence into the hopper 
and then turn the handle for the proper penalty. In the 
same way the scientific treatment of some parts of educa- 
tion has much too mechanical an aspect to attract us. There 
is something very repulsive to ordinary minds (to mine at 
least) in the scientific treatment of the emotions, especially 
of those which we share in common with other animals. 
This feeling of repulsion may be a weakness, but it must 
be allowed for nevertheless. We listen to the philosophers 
impatiently, and, instead of thanking them for the useful 
hints they give us, we are always on the look-out for an 
opportunity of laughing at them. The mistakes, even the 
most pernicious mistakes of use and wont, we treat with all 
indulgence, but, if we can catch the theorist tripping, we 
raise a guffaw directly. Take the misery inflicted on the 
young by the long school hours, the dull tasks and the 
schoolmaster's brutality in days gone by. All this is readily 
condoned, but those who were not content with use and wont 
are condemned even by Wordsworth as — 

" ' These mighty workmen of our later age, 
Who with a broad highway have overbridged 
The froward chaos of futurity 
Paved to their bidding ; they who have the skill 
To manage works and things and make them act 
On infants 1 minds as surely as the sun 
Deals with a flower ; the keepers of our time, 
The guides and wardens of our faculties, 
Sages who in their prescience would control 
All accidents, and to the very road 
Which they have fashioned would confine us down 
Like engines . 1 — Prelude. 



528 R. H. Quick 

There is then a dislike to the attempt to analyse our feel- 
ings, and the feelings often seem to defy analysis. Nothing 
is more provoking than a would-be explanation which we feel 
to be no explanation at all. Hobbes tries to account for 
laughter, and says it arises from a feeling of superiority to 
somebody else. We feel at once that this account of the 
phenomenon is altogether inadequate. Some of Bain's at- 
tempts seem to me no less inadequate, e.g. when he says 
that games take their zest from the satisfaction of the malevo- 
lent passions. Chas. James Fox said that the next greatest 
pleasure to winning at cards was losing at cards. Was his 
malevolence so great that it took pleasure whenever there 
was a victim, even himself ? Thus the attempt at exhaustive 
analysis has two great drawbacks. (i) The analysis is not 
after all, and cannot be, exhaustive (take e.g. Bain's para- 
graph about poetry). (2) A number of things are put in, 
not that the mention of them is useful or entertaining, but 
simply to make the account complete. This book suffers 
from both these drawbacks. We feel that nothing is treated 
fully, and that many things mentioned are not worth men- 
tioning. And, when analysis is at all complete, it is for the 
ordinary reader simply bewildering. If we brought a host of 
considerations to bear on our every-day acts we should con- 
stantly come to a standstill. A man who was very clever in 
taking pieces of metal out of the eyes of a fellow-workman 
so interested an oculist that the oculist took him in hand 
and taught him the structure of the eye; but, when the 
workman knew the risks he ran in operating, he lost nerve 
and could never operate again. 

" Bain calls logic the grammar of knowledge. Perhaps we 
no more want logic for ordinary reasoning than grammar for 
ordinary speech in our mother tongue. But grammar may 
give us an intelligent comprehension of the language we use, 
and may at times modify our practice. Similarly about style, 
Herbert Spencer says that rules useless in writing are very 



Bains 'Education'' 529 

useful in correcting what we have written. Perhaps a book 
like Bain's may do for us what logic, grammar, rhetoric do 
in their several departments. It would be as absurd to set 
out as a teacher in reliance on Bain as to try to reason by 
Aldrich or to talk English by Mason. But as tests and cor- 
rections, the theoretical exposition and the rules derived from 
it may be of great assistance. All teachers should from time 
to time carefully examine their own practice, and in doing 
this rules may give us a standard by which we may estimate 
and correct what we are doing. Much of what he says about 
history and geography is well worth reading, but in it we see 
a thoughtful and sensible man laying down the law without 
much attempt at reasoning ; and his directions, however good 
in themselves, have as little title to be called science as the 
recipes of a cookery-book." 

" 13 Feb. '79. Bain finished at last ! It is the hard for- 
tune of a critic that he has to pass a judgment on much 
that he would gladly leave unjudged. We all of us have 
among our friends persons of sterling worth who happen to 
be destitute of pleasing appearance or of pleasing manners. 
In such cases we think of their good qualities, their upright- 
ness, their benevolence, their usefulness to society or to their 
immediate friends, and we avoid forming, and still more ex- 
pressing, any opinion on their features or deportment. But 
the literary critic must form an opinion about the manner of 
his author, and must express it even in his author's hearing. 
In the present instance dire necessity compels me to say 
that I have seldom read a book of sterling merit so totally 
destitute of charm, of everything in fact which makes reading 
attractive, as this volume of Bain's. Of course it may be said 
that the book aims at being scientific, and therefore must be 
dull. No doubt abstract propositions cannot be entertaining, 
but there may be a kind of charm in the exposition even of 
abstractions for all those who are capable of understanding 
them. Huxley's account of Hume's philosophy is a case in 

2M 



530 R. H. Quick 

point. The mind of the reader is presented with a clear 
image of what the writer means, and clearness in such a case 
has a charm of its own. But Bain gives nothing of the same 
clear-cut outline to the conception his readers get from him. 

" When we talk of education as a science we cannot mean 
that it is a science in itself, like geometry, but an applied 
science whose principles must be sought from other sciences, 
especially, as it is generally assumed, from physiology and 
psychology. But to the bearings of physiology Bain devotes 
only three pages out of 452. There is only one Point where 
the Professor is anxious to urge the importance of physiology. 
'It would,' he tells us (p. 11), 'be a forgetting of mercies to 
undervalue the results accruing to education from the physio- 
logical doctrine of the physical basis of memory.' 

" The physical basis, not of memory only, but of every 
purpose, thought, argument, imagination, has been dwelt upon 
by Professor Bain elsewhere, e.g. in Fortnightly Review, Aug. 
and Sept. '68. How far this is ascertained scientific truth 
and how far hypothesis I have not the means of judging. 
I am quite prepared to receive the verdict of science against 
which a priori theories of the nature of the mind are im- 
potent, and I cannot agree in the antipathy to allowing the 
influence of matter on thought. It is quite certain that the 
process which we call thinking is affected by our material 
bodies. Nobody doubts that repeated potions of brandy in- 
terfere with a man's clear-headedness. Why then should we 
hesitate in allowing that the process of thinking may likewise 
affect and leave traces on our material body? And if we 
grant that thinking of necessity (in our present physical con- 
dition) involves a physical act, we have by no means granted 
that thinking is a physical act and nothing more. But our 
knowledge does not seem sufficiently exact to justify the 
conclusions Mr Bain would draw from it. Our power of 
secreting knowledge is, he thinks, limited. Even our inter- 
ests are merely directions of force, and our supply of force 



Bains ' Education ' 531 

is a definite quantity : we cannot increase it. Now here we 
have truths (if truths they be) which would have the most 
important effect on the work of the schoolroom. We know 
indeed that our pupils' time and attention is a fixed quantity, 
and that the time and attention spent on one subject cannot 
be given to another. But we know, or at least believe, that 
in later days they will have a good deal of time and energy 
at their disposal, and that they may then learn anything they 
feel the need of. But suppose, by teaching one thing we 
distinctly decrease our pupils' available force for learning 
other things, we are doing irreparable injury by giving the 
less valuable where we might have given the more valuable 
knowledge. So, too, with interests. Mr Bain says that if 
Carlyle had developed an interest in frogs he would thereby 
have been prevented from taking an interest in something 
else which now actually interests him. But maybe this 
analogy from mechanical force is altogether misleading. We 
cannot at present admit that this theory is established a priori, 
and when we reason from experience we do not seem to be 
led in the direction of it. It may be, indeed, that we have 
all a limit to our powers of memory and of interest, but the 
limit is never attained by us. In this case the fact has no 
practical significance. J. S. Mill contended that the average 
boy might learn all that he learnt. Before we can look upon 
education as a science we must have determined whether 
learning one thing hinders us from learning another, whether 
it weakens our hold on what we already know, how far the 
effects differ in the case of connected and of desultory 
studies. These are questions which, in the present state 
of physiology, cannot be settled a priori or by a page or 
two of ' physiological probabilities.' 

" The bearings of Psychology are much more fully dis- 
cussed But the analysis seems to me to fall far short of 

scientific thoroughness and accuracy. One of the most im- 
portant problems for the teacher is how the memory should 



53 2 R. H. Quick 

be treated, and here science might be expected to come to 
our aid and explain to us the various ways in which memory 
acts and the conditions best adapted to its various activities. 
Mr Bain prefers the expression ' retentive faculty,' so as to 
include all aptitudes, and not simply recalling the ' ideas ' of 
past impressions. But is there not some danger in such 
generalising? When we consider how retentiveness is best 
cultivated, we must distinguish between retentiveness of dif- 
ferent kinds. When the hand plays with effect a succession 
of notes on the piano, it retains a tendency, though a very 
slight one, to go through the same sequence again. When 
the child repeats the letters of the alphabet, it retains a slight 
tendency to fall into that sequence again. How strong this 
tendency to run along established sequences becomes by 
practice may easily be tested by anyone who tries to say 
the alphabet, first forward and then backward. The estab- 
lishment of these sequences is secured by hammering away 
at them again and again. This the schoolmaster has long 
ago discovered, and Mr Bain refers approvingly to his prac- 
tice. (Bain, p. 21.) But hitherto the schoolmaster has been 
blamed for thus hammering away at sequences, and scientific 
authorities have required of him that he should cultivate 
other kinds of memory instead of this tendency to run me- 
chanically along trains. Mr Bain speaks of the retentive 
faculty as employed in two ways : first, in driving home a 
new fact ; second, in rendering an impression self-sustaining 
and recoverable. To consider the second heading only, the 
nature of this impression should be taken into account. It 
once happened to me to have to drag a pond for a drowned 
body, which in the end was brought up. For some days 
afterwards the impression of that dead body was constantly 
obtruding itself upon my mind's eye. It was not simply re- 
coverable : it could not be avoided. This action of the mind 
seems almost different in kind from its action in remem- 
bering and recalling at will, say, the 32 nd proposition of 



Bams i Education y 533 

Euclid, book 1. We wish to recall that proposition. Ar- 
bitrary association of ideas immediately suggests the words, 
' The three angles of every triangle are equal to two right 
angles.' But at first these are words only : our mind runs 
along an established train of sounds. By well-formed but 
still arbitrary association, the meaning of the words comes 
into consciousness without apparent effort. Next for the 
proof. We have to think, as we say. If we have often 
been through the chain of reasoning, our mind again falls 
into it almost as mechanically and uncritically as if the 
sequence were arbitrary. But if the train is not thus estab- 
lished, the mind helps itself along by means of the reason. 
When new to the subject, the mind may simply run along 
a sequence, as, say, in learning a Greek verb, or it may have 
to master a chain of reasoning, as in learning Euclid. The 
expenditure of brain-force used must greatly differ in the two 
cases, but Mr Bain takes no note of them. We can observe 
and take notes, he says, when we are too tired to trust to 
our memory ; whence he infers that committing to memory 
is the action of the intellect which makes the greatest de- 
mand upon the brain. But we can imagine a man too tired 
to take in a new demonstration in geometry, and yet quite 
capable of remembering an invitation to dinner without the 
aid of a notebook. But Mr Bain might say the mind would 
here be called upon for a difficult feat in reasoning and a 
very easy one in remembering. Might not the student be 
able to go through the reasoning and yet unable to commit 
it to memory? I reply that it is impossible to decide on 
equality of difficulty in the two cases. It should be ob- 
served that receiving the impression . does not admit of de- 
grees ; the mind follows the reasoning, or it does not, but 
the rendering the impression recoverable admits of an infinite 
number of degrees. When the mind has received the im- 
pression once, it can never entirely lose the effect of the 
impression. It may be so affected by the impression that it 



534 R> ff- Quick 

is unable to banish that impression from the consciousness. 
This is the extremest instance. It may be able to recover 
it at will without conscious effort. It may, short of this, be 
able to recover it with different degrees of effort. It may lose 
the power for a time, and yet regain it ; and, finally, it may be 
unable to recall the impression, and yet some suggestion from 
without, some association, may bring it back. 

" On p. 29 Bain speaks of the law of the mutual exclusion 
of great pleasure and great intellectual exertion which forbids 
the employment of too much excitement of any kind when we 
aim at the most exacting of all mental results — the forming of 
new adhesive growths. But a little more information would 
seem necessary about this 'law.' On what does it rest? On 
a priori grounds dependent on the analogy of physical forces ? 
or is it arrived at by observation ? Bain has been speaking of 
new adhesive growths generally including ' new bents.' Now 
it is obvious that such new adhesive growths do not always 
demand great intellectual exertion. Suppose a boy were to 
hear Herr Joachim play the violin and were to get intense 
delight from it, he might not only obtain a self-sustaining 
and recoverable impression, but also a new bent, and from 
that time take to music. These new adhesive growths would 
be increased as the pleasure heightened ; whereas, according 
to Mr Bain, they should, beyond a certain point, be dimin- 
ished. He makes no distinction that I can see between pleas- 
ure derived from the source of the impression and pleasure not 
so derived. If the pleasure has no tendency to distract the 
attention I cannot see how the impression is weakened by it. 

" ' All great teachers, from Socrates downward, recognise 
the necessity of putting the learner into a state of pain to 
begin with.' This is simply an appeal to authority. Com- 
monplaces cannot be turned into scientific truths by being 
clothed in obscure phraseology. Everyone knows that he 
can attend easily to that which gives him pleasure. This 
does not become science when expressed as follows : ' The 



Bams 'Education* 535 

law of the Will on its side of greatest potency is that Pleasure 
sustains the movement that brings it.' 

" The great fault of the book may be expressed in one 
word, vagueness. Take the following passage : ' The full 
compass,' &c, p. 35. Now here 'committing a lesson to 
memory ' is spoken of as if it were a definite act that could 
be performed in one way only. If we ask what a lesson is, 
Mr Bain seems to answer, ' A lesson is just a lesson.' But, 
without attempting any exhaustive classification, we may ob- 
serve that when we set a pupil to commit a lesson to memory 
from the book we may direct him to master and retain the 
subject-matter of the book, or to learn the words by heart. 
If both are required the task will really be twofold. Now 
the method of ' conning ' the lesson will depend on the ob- 
ject with which we con it. In either case the method of 
learning which, according to Bain, ' we ' adopt may, for any- 
thing he tells us, be the unintelligent hammering away, ' the 
good old rule of the schoolmaster,' &c. (p. 21), which should 
be a thing of the past if education is now a science. What 
is racking the memory? Is it excluding from the conscious- 
ness all other ideas in the hope that the right idea will then 
present itself? or is it the search for something in what we 
do remember that will suggest the right continuation? or is 
it simply an attempt to continue in the same train of sounds 
which has previously passed through the mind ? " 

Children'' s Books 

" Of course these ' Contributions of Q. Q.' are Tendenz- 
Schriften. If writings for the young were not, they would 
probably not find favour with the buyers, though they would 
not be less pleasing to the readers. As of old, 0?nne tulit 
punctum qui miscuit utile dulci ; the utile to please the par- 
ents, the dulce the children. But there is great danger in 
the misconception to which the Tendenz almost inevitably 



536 R. H. Quick 

leads. If the world of fiction into which the young are in- 
troduced has no resemblance to the world in which they live, 
all the morals which the fiction is intended to instil will seem 
as unreal as the world by which they are illustrated." 



Outlines of the History and Formation of the Understanding. 

By W. Ellis 

"This is one of the books from which I fail to get any 
profit. It was recommended to me by Mr Payne, and is 
the work of an enthusiast for the improvement of every- 
body ; but I don't see that any good is done by putting in 
a quasi-scientific form facts which are familiar to everybody. 
Everything is to be learnt without one single painful asso- 
ciation (p. 114), &c, &c. These people's instructions for 
education are like the celebrated rule for billiards, 'When 
in doubt pocket the red and cannon.' " 



INDEX 



Abbott, E. A., 280, 355, 357, 358, 

360, 361 
Accuracy for Children, 235 
Action, Thought and, 423 
Advantage of not being able to do 

things, 435 
Ancien Regime, The old gentleman 

of the, 509 
Alma, Battle of the, in the London 

Gazette, 517 
Ambition, 441 
American Institutions, 514 
Anecdotes, Characteristic, 9, IO, 

18, 19, 64, 105 
Architects and Teachers, 353 
Arithmetic, 230, 243, 288, 314, 

3 2 6, 3 2 7 
Arnold, Matthew, 182, 186, 432, 

450, 470, 471 
Arnold, T. K., Reminiscences of, 

519, 520 
Arnold, T. K.'s School .books, 349 
Art and theory of Art, 413 
Ascham, Roger, Schoolmaster, 395 
Assistant Masters, Dismissal of, 

I7J.I73 

Assistant Masters,Tenure of, 1 69-1 74 
Athletolatry, 38 

Bad Teaching, 234, 236, 284, 325 

Bain, A., 396, 526-535 

Barnard, President F. A. P., on 

American Institutions, 514 
Birmingham Boys, 215 
Boarding v. Day Schools, 1 64-169 
Books that have helped me, no 
Bowen, E. E., Essay on a Liberal 

Education, 395 
Bowen, E. E., Method of teaching, 

33,34 
Boys, Classification of, 278, 279 
Boys and Masters, 36, 210 
Boys and Masters, Relation of, 36, 

38, 261 
Bradford,Girls'Grammar School, 190 



Bradley, G. G., 360, 518, 519 
Bradley, G. G., Method of training 

Masters, 350 
Brain tiredness, 108 
' Breaking up ' at Cranleigh, 1 7 
Bright, John, 471 
Brighton Grammar School, 187, 

188, 191-194 
British Museum, On an idol at the, 

515 
Brooks, Phillips, 493 

Browning, O., 367 

Brussels Girls' School, A., 199-202 

Brussels, UEcole Modele, 189, 204- 

207 
Bullying, 179 
Buls, M., 202 
Bunsen, Herr v., on Reahchulen 

and Gymnasien, 190 
Butcher, S. H., A letter to, on 

Training, 380 
Butler, Arthur, Method of training 

Masters, 350 
Butler, H. M., 48, 51, 61-64, 468- 

47°, 5°9 

Calverley, C. S., an Anecdote, 449 
Cambridge, Compulsory Greek at, 

254. 

Cambridge Conference on Training 
of Teachers, 359 

Cambridge Lectures on Education, 
24, 74-78, 366-369 

Cambridge Teachers' Examination, 
220, 386 

Cambridge Teachers' Training Syn- 
dicate, 74 

Cambridge Training College, 384 

Carlyle, T., in, 436, 452 

Carlyle, T., on Genius, 432 

Carter, R. Brudenell, on the Arti- 
ficial Production of Stupidity, 
270 

Chad, the Cricketer, 522 

Chalk, On a bit of, 453 



537 



538' 



Index 



Character judged by comparison, 425 
Characteristic Anecdotes, 9, 10, 18, 

19, 64, 105 
Chenery, T., 462, 463, 51 1 
Child Nature, 297-302 {see Dora 

and Oliver) 
Children, Aptitudes of, 142 
Children's Books, 536 
Children, It does not pay to de- 
ceive, 332 
Christianity, Modern, 501 
Class Teaching, 241, 287 
Classification of Boys, 278, 279 
Clearing the decks, 65, 91, 10 1, 

109 
Code Conference, A, 142-144 
Code, Education by the, 128-137 
Coleridge, S. T., An anecdote of, 

455 
Collecting Mania, The, 443 

Communal School at Brussels, 202 

Compayre, 112 

Competitive Examinations, Futility 

of, 216 
Confirmation, 55 
Consciousness of arrears, 46 
Conservatism and Liberalism, 406, 

407 
Controversy, 439 
Cookery in Schools, 1 14 
Cramming and Examinations, 273, 

274 
Cranleigh, 16, 21, 29 
Cranleigh, ' Breaking up ' at, 17 
Cribs, 46 

Criticisms of books, 524-536 
Criticism Lesson, A, 384 
Cyclopaedia of Education, Kiddle 

and Shem's, 524 

Daniel, Canon, 367 

Death and personal identity, 502 

Debate in the House of Commons 

on Education Estimates, 127, 139 

-141 ; on Assistant Masters, 174 
Demogeot, Report on English 

Schools, 165 
De Quincey, A Sermon on a text 

from, 381-384 
Desultoriness, 277 
Dickens, Forster's Life of, 450 



Didactic Teaching, An apology for, 
265 

Difficulties, A Lecture on, 484 

Diocesan Inspector, A, 156 

Disraeli's Plagiarisms, 455 

Distinction due to strong interests, 
440 

Dixon, Mr G., Objections to a 
Chair of Education in the Mason 
College, 373 

Dora, 297; taking notice, 303; 
hearing comes first, 303; starting 
at the light, 303; laughing and 
crying, 304; exercise, 304; learn- 
ing to play, 304; delight in sound 
and touch, 305; sympathy, 305; 
conscience, growth of, 305 ; walk- 
ing alone, 306; sight becomes 
the leading sense, 306; talking, 
306; disobedience, 307, 316; pic- 
tures, 308; jokes, 308, 319, 320; 
development of the will, 308; 
memory from association, 310; 
dramatic stage, 31 1 ; dreaming, 
312; stage of inquiry, 312; dis- 
tinguishing tunes, 313; sense of 
her own dignity, 314; learning to 
count, 314, 326, 327, 345; recog- 
nising wild-flowers by their names, 
315; self-assertion, 316; resent- 
ment at being set right, 317; 
asking questions, 317, 323; ob- 
servation, 318, 322; poetry, 
memory and feeling for, 318, 331, 
332, 337; beauties of nature, 

318, 319; coining words, 320; 
collision of wills, 320; hide and 
seek, 321; pride in wrong-doing, 
321; memory, 322, 344; reading 
lessons, 324, 325, 329, 339, 341 ; 
metaphors, 324; forms of temper, 

319, 326, 331, 336, 341, 346; 
continuous attention distasteful, 
328; powers of narrative, 328; 
confusion of words, 328; attempts 
at writing and drawing, 329; affec- 
tion for Oliver, 329, 331; visual- 
isation, 330; knowing poetry too 
well, 332; writing lessons, 333; 
unexpected difficulties, 334; fail- 
ure of the mind to act, 334, 335; 



Index 



539 



pleasure in listening to poetry, 
336; arithmetic, 337, 338, 344, 
347; results by the code, 338; 
restlessness, 330, 338, 340; 
naughtiness, 314, 339, 346; 
character, difference from Oliver, 
330; independence, 342; geog- 
raphy, 343; printing, 336, 344; 
spelling, 345 ; phenomena, philo- 
sophical difficulty about, 347 

Drawing Lesson, A, 155 

Dutch Schoolboy, A, 518 

Eaves-dropping, 510 
Ecole Modele, Brussels, 198, 204-207 
Ecole Normale, Brussels, 203 
Editors, Experience of, 521 
Education, A proposed Chair of, in 
Mason College, Birmingham, 373- 

376 
Education, The cost of, 387 
Education, Elementary, worked by 

Machinery, 152 
Education Estimates, 127, 139-141 
Education, History of, Cambridge 

lectures on, 24, 74-78, 366-369 
Education, The Historical theory of, 

378 . 
Education, Rational, Grant Duff on, 

249-252 
Education, Religious, in Public 

Schools, 13, 14, 15 
Education as a Science, A. Bain's, 

526-535 
Education, Theory of, 366-369 
EducationalLecturesin Yorkshire, 82 
Educational Reformers, 10, 24-28, 

104 
Educational Reformers, American 

appreciation of, 27 
Educational Reformers, French ap- 
preciation of, 28 
Educational Writers, Study of, 262 
Ellis, Robinson, an anecdote of, 510 
Ellis, W., Outlines of the History 
and Formation of the Under- 
standing, 536 
Emerson's Essay on Education, 340 
Emulation, 240 
Endowments, 50 
Energy and Genius, 432 



English, Learning through the 

Classics, 259 
Entrance Scholarships, 176-178 
Essay, A Harrow Boy's, 505 
Essays in Real-Schulen, 183 
Eton, 184, 185 
Eve, H. W., 278 
" Evil is wrought by want of 

thought," 242 
Examination, Cambridge Teachers', 

220, 221 
Examination Paper in Shakspere, 

Comments on, 224 
Examinations, 216-226 
Examinations and Cramming, 273, 

274 
Examinations, I. C. S., 249 
Examinations, Theory of, 216 
Examiner, The Comprehensive, 223 
Excellence, Low standard of, 385 
Exercises, 52, 53, 278 
Exercises, Correction of, 278 
Experience, Scientific record of, 263 
Experience, varied, Necessity of, 275 
Expression affects thought, 495 
Externals, Importance of, 517 

Familiarity, Terrible, 414 
Fearon, D., 277 
Fitch, Sir J., 356, 367, 399 
Fluellen's Leek, 283 
Forms, Use of fixed, 442 
French Book, Arnold's First, 389 
French, A boy's mistakes in, 507 
French Conferences, 486, 487 
French Lessons at Neuilly, 390, 

391, 408 ^ 
French Lycees, 186 
French Mots, 454 
French views of Public Schools, 

165, 166 

Genius, Energy and, 432 
Gentleness, 297 

Geography, Teaching of, 15, 288 
German Fach-literatur, 526 
Germany, Masters in, 181-183 
German Wedding Tour, A, 510 
Girls' Schools, 190, 283 
Gladstone, W. E., An anecdote of, 
512 



540 



Index 



Globe, Article in, 'The Fisher's 

Cunning,' 385 
Goodwin, Harvey, as a preacher, 483 
Governing Bodies of Grammar 

Schools, 98 
Grammar, A Grammarian's, 507 
Grammar Schools, Governing Bodies 

of, 98 
Greek, Compulsory, at Cambridge, 

254 
Grey, Mrs W., Students may not 

earn money, 359 
Guildford, 80 
Guildford, Reminiscences of, by an 

old pupil, 82-89 

Hallam, G. H., 1 1 6-1 18 

Hallam, as an historian, 451 

Hamerton, P. H., The Intellectual 
Life, 425 

Hamilton, Lord G., on Mr Rath- 
bone's Motion on Training of 
H.M.I., 387 

Hamiltonian system, 393, 395, 397 

Hanna, Dr, 508 

" Harassing Legislation," 35 

Hard Work, 411, 509 

Harris, Dr W. T., on Education, 

Harrison, Frederic, in Fortnightly 
Review, on changed conditions 
of life, 371 

Harrow, 29-59, 116-118 

Harrow, A Day's Work at, 41 

Harrow Sermons, Dr Butler's, 477 

Harrow Stories, 38 

Harrow System, The, 32 

Headaches, 44, 45 

Headmasters and Assistants, Rela- 
tions of, 18 

Headmasters and Assistants, Tenure 

of, 173 
Headmasters' Committee meeting 

with Sir J. K. Shuttleworth's 

Committee, 351 
Headmasters, The two requisites in, 

179 
Headmastership, Proposed, 78 
Herbart, 275 
History of Education, Cambridge 

Lectures on, 24, 74-78 



Hogarth, 459 
Hurstpierpoint, 15, 16, 29 
Hymns, Effect of, 4 

Impressions, The fixity of some, 402 
Impressionist Teaching, ^ 
Inaccuracy and Ignorance, General, 

408 
Individuals and Classes, 437, 438 
Inductive Method, The, 395 
Inexperienced, Cockiness of the, 377 
Informative subjects, Art of teach- 
ing, 343 
Inspectorships, G. P. D. S. Co., 73 
Intellectual Freshness, 290 
Intellectual Impressions, Early, 257 
Interest, 267, 284, 413, 415, 416 
Interest in one's own notions, 430 
Investigation, Method of, 341 

Jacotot, School of Language Teach- 
ing, 393, 394 
Jesuit plan in English Schools, A, 520 
Jesuit Schools, 207-209, 293 
Jokes, The stage for, in a lecture, 

488, 489 
Johnson, Dr, opinion of Education, 

373 

Kingsley, Charles, on the poetry of 

common things, 407 
Kirkby Lonsdale, 97 
Knocking into shape, 159 
Knowledge, Capitalising, 396 
Knowledge clusters about a name, 

404 
Knowledge, Miscellaneous, 6 

Lake's Preparatory School, 298 
Lancaster Grammar School, 11 
Language, 388-397 
Language Teaching, E. E. Bowen 

and Ascham on, 395 
Language Teaching, Expression and 

Impression in, 392 
Language Teaching, Two Schools 

of, 393 . 
Lapsus Linguae, A, 511 
Latin, Elementary Teaching of, 231 
Latin in Middle Class Schools, 247 
Latin Primer,The Public School, 525 



Index 



54i 



Lawgivers should have good mem- 
ories, 213 
Learning, Boys' indifference to, 37 
Learning and knowing, 507 
Lectures, Educational, in York- 
shire, 82 
Lectures, Extempore or written, 

479, 485, 486, 488, 489 
Lectures on the history of Educa- 
tion at Cambridge, 24, 74-78 
Lectures, Taking notes during, 479 
Lecture, The most successful, 76 
Leisure, 68, 98 
Lessing, 419 

Life, How to lengthen, 507 
Life needs prearrangement, 409 
Life, The future, 503 
Life, Waste of, 430 
Literature in Primary Schools, Arti- 
cle on, 58 
Literary Style, 451, 452 
Living, Art of, 420, 422, 424 
Living on a low level, 107, 410 
Llewelyn Davies, J., 8, 9, 115, 116, 

461 
Locke's Thoughts concerning Edu- 
cation, 90, 91, 293 
London, Picturesqueness of, 407 
Longley, Archbishop, A Reminis- 
cence of, 520 
Lowe, R. (Lord Sherbrooke), 130, 

*37> 157 
Lubbock, Sir J., on Education, 141 

Lyon Foundation, 49 

Macaulay, T. B., 401, 452, 456, 457 
MacCarthy, Letter to, 144-146, 371, 

37 2 . . • 

Macmillan, Memoir of Daniel, 462 

Manner in lecturing, 483 

Manner, A Schoolmaster's, 211, 
213 

Maria Grey Training School, 384 

Masters, Different types of, 264 

Masters' Meeting, A, 53 

Masterships : Lancaster Grammar 
School, 1 1 ; Guildford Grammar 
School, 11; Hurstpierpoint, 15, 
16; Surrey County School, Cran- 
leigh, 16, 20-24; Harrow, 29-59 

Maurice, F. D., in, 495 



Meiklejohn, Prof., School of Lan- 
guage Teaching, 393 

Memory, 398-405, 506 

Memory, Ambiguity of the word, 398 

Memory and Intelligence, 404 

Memory and Vision, 3 

Memory, Children's, Tenacity of, 344 

Memory, Fitch's tract on, 399 

Memory, Freaks of, 399, 400, 403, 
404 

Memory in general not active, 401 

Memory, Interest alone will not fix 
anything in the, 400 

Memory, vain repetitions, 398 

Middle Class Education, Mark Pat- 
tison on, 252 

Mill, J. S., 289 

Millais, J., on looking at his own 
works, 445 

Milton on Education, 340 

Miscellaneous Knowledge, 6 

Monitorial System, 51 

Moral Gravitation, Law of, 428 

Multiplicity of studies, 256 

Mundella's, Mr, New Code, 81, 140 

National Education, 156 
Natural Science Teaching, 292 
Nature and Nurture, 428, 429 
Nature and Providence, 501 
Nearing the Station, 100 
Neatness, 54 

Neglecting, the Art of, 69 
Newman, J. H., 112, 434 
Newspaper?, Unscrupulousness of, 

459 
New York School Journal, 453 

Ohne Liebe Kein Lehren, 259 
Old Testament, Children in, 298 
Oliver, 297, 303; interest in his 
own movements, 322; attempts 
at play and speech, 322; gener- 
ous instincts, 322; restless activ- 
ity, 3 2 3> 3 2 5; imitation, 323; 
affection for Dora, 329, 331; 
temper, 331, 336; humming a 
tune before learning to talk, 332; 
confidence begets obedience, 333; 
efforts to talk, 333; character, 
difference from Dora, 330; first 



542 



Index 



lessons, 345 ; writing, 345 ; count- 
ing, 345 5 arithmetic, 347 
Originality in a writer, 454 



Parmentier, M. J,, 28, 74, 104 
Pascal's Provinciates, 404 
Patience, 244, 292, 338, 341 
Pattison, Mark, on Middle Class 

Education, 252 
Payment by results, 146 
Payne, Joseph, 270, 273 
Payne, W. H., on difference be- 
tween children and grown peo- 
ple, 344 
Personal identity and death, 502 
Pessimism in practical atheism, 498 
Pestalozzi, 146, 271, 281 
Platitudes, 491 
Plumptre, Dean, 489-49 1 
Practice, 289, 291 
Practice, Theory v., 411, 412 
Practising Schools, 387 
Pragmatical Pupil, A, 212 
Preachers, A contrast in, 489-491 
Preaching and Lecturing, 472-487 
Preaching blunts feeling, 487 
Preaching, Effects of, on the 

Preacher, 493 
Preceptors, College of, 354, 386 
Preceptors, College of, Teachers' 

Examination Papers, 354 
Precocious boy, A, 298 
Prendergast's Method, 388, 393, 

394, 397 
Preparation and Class Teaching, 

I5 8 > : 59 

Preparatory Schools, 237, 238 

Preparatory Schools at Orme Square, 
67; at Guildford, 80 

Primary Schools, Waste of time in, 
128 

Private Schools, 196-198 

Psychology and Training of Teach- 
ers, 376, 377 

Public opinion a hindrance to Edu- 
cation, 256 

Public School Education, Defects 
of, 175 

Public Schools, 158 

Punishments, 160-163, 210, 229 



Quarterly Review, on Tennyson, 464 
Quarterly Review, ' Our Schools 

and Schoolmasters,' 524 
Quick: anecdotes of, 9, 10, 18, 19; 
books that have helped me, no; 
Cambridge Lectures on History 
of Education, 24, 74-78; child- 
hood, 2-6; clearing the decks, 
65, 91, 101, 109; College, 7-8; 
Clerical Work, 8, n, 115, 116; 
Confessio Fidei, 499, 500; editing 
Locke's Thoughts Concerning 
Education, 90, 91; Educational 
Council of Yorkshire, lectures 
for, 82; Educational Reformers, 
10, 24-28, 104; Germany, visit 
to, 180; Guildford, 80; Guild- 
ford Workhouse, preaching at, 
492; Harrow, life at, 29-59, 
116-118; inspectorship, G.P.D.S. 
Co., 73; last days, 124-126; 
Lecture, The most successful, 76; 
Literature in Primary Schools, 
article on, 58; marriage, 66; 
Nearing the Station, 100; New 
Year, Thoughts on the, 70; note- 
books, the, 108; ordination, n; 
Orme Square, 67; parents, I; 
Pourparlers for a Headmaster- 
ship, 78; Recollections of, by Dr 
H. M. Butler, 61-64; Recollec- 
tions of, by John Russell, 20-24; 
Redhill, Life at, 103, n 8-1 23; 
school-days, 4, 5 ; Sedbergh, 94 ; 
Sedbergh, resignation of, 102; 
sensitiveness, 114; style, estimate 
of his own, 58, 59 

R's, the three, 289 

Radonvilliers, De la Manure d'ap- 
prendre les langues, 397 

Rathbone, Mr, On Training of 
H.M. Inspectors, 387 

Ratich, School of Language Teach- 
ing, 393* 394 

Reading, 450-471 

Reading backwards, Teaching, 331 

Reading in Elementary Schools, 

I37- J 39, 147, I 5 2 
Realschulen and Gymnasien, Herr 
v. Bunsen, on, 190 



Index 



543 



Recollections of Childhood, 2-6 

Redhill, 103, 105, 1 18-123 

Reforms, Educational, Generally 
Improvised expedients, 417 

Reforms, Why they are rare and 
tardy, 446 

Refor?ners, Educational, 10, 24—28 

Relation of boys and Masters, 36, 38 

Relations of Headmasters and As- 
sistants, 18 

Religious Beliefs, 498-504 

Religious Education in Public 
Schools, 13, 14, 15 

Religious Teaching in Elementary 
Schools, 149-151 

Renan, Ernest, 503 

Repetition, 238, 285, 286 

Restlessness, 427 

Ridding, Dr, On Cambridge Ex- 
amination in Theory of Education, 
368, 369, 370, 439 

Ridding, Dr, On Entrance Scholar- 
ships, 178 

Rizpah, Tennyson's, 460 

Roland for an Oliver, A, 214 

Rollin's Method, 349 

Rote, Learning by, 280 

Roundell, Mr. C. S., On Practice 
and Theory, 386 

Rousseau, 295, 342, 344, 482, 513 

Routine, 40, 408 

Ruskin, 289, 294, 401, 465, 466, 467 

Russell, John, Recollections of Mr 
Quick, 20-24 

St Mary's School, Brighton, 128-137 
School Endowments, Employment 

of, 50 
School list, 57 

Schoolmaster's Manner, A, 211, 213 
Schools, Practising, 387 
School Systems, The weakness of, 

35 2 
School, The world of, 39 
School Wrinkles, 228, 233 
Science and Art in Education, 280, 

281 
Science not for Children, 239 
Scripture Lessons, 43 
Secondary Masters, A Training 

College for, 272 



Secondary Teachers,Training of, 350 
Sedbergh, 94-103 

Sedbergh Grammar School, 194, 195 
Seeley, J. R., 124-126, 223, 269, 

402, 457, 458, 484, 485, 515 
Self-absorption, 431 
Self-castigation, 18 
Self-improvement, 262 
Self Interest, Fallacy of, 418 
Sensitiveness, 114 
Sermons, 472, 478, 481-484, 487, 

489-493, 495, 496 
Sermon on a Text from De Quincey, 

381-383 
Set books, An Examination paper 

in, 218 
Sharpe, T. W., 360 
Shuttleworth, Sir J. Kay, 272, 330, 

35 1 

Sidgwick, Henry, On Training, 360, 

518 

Simon, Jules, 505 

' Skewing ' boys, 260 

Slough, Mr Hawtrey's School at, 189 

Smollett, 459 

Social Science Congress and Speak- 
ing, 478 

Sonnenschein, School of Language 
Teaching, 393 

Speaking, The art of, 493, 494 

Spectator, 459, 521 

Spectator, A letter to the, on Assist- 
ant Masters, 1 69-1 71 

Spectator, 'A letter to Mr Hutton, on 
Teachers' Examinations, 361, 362 

Spectator, On taking a boy's word, 
211 

Spectator, On Tedium, 442 

Spencer, Herbert, 497, 528 

Spencer, Lord, 81, 137, 445 

Stephen, Sir James, Lectures on 
History, 227 

Storr, F., 1 18-123 

Stupidity, R. Brudenell Carter on, 
270 

Style, Estimate of his own, 58, 59 

Style, Literary, 451, 45 2 > 45 7> 45 8 

Subjective feelings, Memory of, 403 

Sully, J., Outlines of Psychology, 
386 

Superannuation of Masters, 176 



544 



Index 



Surrey County School, 16, 21 
Swift, 453, 470 
Sympathetic Teaching, 269 
System, Marcel or Arnold, 395 

Talking in School, 295 
Teach, What to, 247 
Teachers, Books for, 282 
Teachers, Examination of, 353, 361, 

363 
Teachers' Examination, Questions 

for, 363 
Teachers' Mistakes, 334, 340, 342, 

343 
Teachers, Products of untrained, 379 
Teachers' Training Syndicate, Cam- 
bridge, 74 
Teachers unimprovable, 56 
Teachers, Waste of power through 

ignorance in, 352, 353 
Teaching, Bad, 234, 236, 284 
Teaching, Didactic, 265 
Teaching, Natural Science, 292 
Teaching of Geography, 15 
Teaching, Sympathetic, 269 
Teaching too high, Danger of, 230 
Tedium, 442 

Temple (Archbishop), 482, 509 
Temple (Archbishop), Method of 

Training Masters, 350 
Tennyson, A., 452, 460, 464, 519 
Thackeray, W. M., 470 
Theory, 418 
Theory of Education, The, 366- 

369, 37° 
Theory v. Practice, 411, 412 
Theory, when important, 418 
Thinking, 423 

Thoughts on the New Year, 70 
Thoughts on Teaching, 70-73, 286, 

287, 392 
Thought and action, 423 
Thring, on Machinery, 267 
Tidying, Reflections on, 446 
Time and energy, 106, 114 
Tradition, The claims of, in Edu- 
cation, 379 
Training, A letter to S. H. Butcher, 
on, 380 



Training Colleges, 272, 350 
Training of Teachers, 349-387, 355, 

371, 380, 381 
Training of Teachers, A London 

U. U. Debate, 355 
Training of Teachers, Cambridge 

Conference on, 359 
Training, The Seamy Side of, 384 
Translation, 460 
Trench, On words, 508 
Truth, 433, 434, 436 
Truth and feeling, 496 
Truth, Lessing and, 419 
Tunnel, Mostly in the, 517 
Tutorial System at Harrow, 48 
Types of Masters, Different, 264 

U. U.'s, The London, 217, 278, 279 
Unkindness, 297 

Variety, Value of, in teaching, 337 
Vaughan, Dr, 51 
Vision and Memory, 3 

Walker, F. W., 279, 280, 356-359 

Ward, James, 367, 526 

Ward, W. G., Ideals of a Christian 

Church, 498 
Westminster Abbey, 2 
Weymouth, Dr R. F,, 280 
Why, Iraportsmce of, in learning, 291 
Will, Interest and the, 415, 416 
Woodard, the Rev. N., 78, 79 
Word and Symbol Connection of, 

in reading, 331 
Word v. Thing, 404. 
Words, The power of, 248, 258,481 
Words without Ideas, Memory of, 

506 
Wordsworth, Dr, 51 
Wordsworth, W., 504, 521, 527 
Work and Leisure, 98 
Work for young boys, 228, 240 
Workers, Good, may be dumb dogs, 

413 
Workhouse Children, 147, 153 

Young, The, should they choose 
their way, 340 



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